Public Health Workers Are Quitting Over Assignments to Guantánamo
Rebekah Stewart, a nurse with the United States Public Health Service, received a call last April that made her cry. She had been selected for deployment in the Trump administration’s new immigrant detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The assignment combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion for using the offshore base to get “a few bad guys” out of the United States with a promise made shortly after his inauguration to detain thousands of non-citizens there. The naval base is notorious for torture and inhumane treatment of men suspected of terrorism following 9/11.
“Deployments are generally not something you can say no to,” Stewart said. She pleaded with the coordination office, which found another nurse to replace her.
Other public health workers, who worked at Guantanamo last year, described the conditions of detention for detainees, some of whom first learned they were in Cuba from nurses and doctors sent to treat them. They treated immigrants held in a dark prison called Camp 6, where no sunlight filters through, said the officers, who were granted anonymity because they fear reprisals if they speak publicly. It previously detained people suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda. The officers said they were not informed in advance of the details of their potential duties at the base.
Although the Public Health Service is not a branch of the U.S. military, its uniformed officers — about 5,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers — act like soldiers carrying a stethoscope in an emergency. The government deploys them during hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings and measles outbreaks. In the meantime, they fill in the gaps in an alphabet soup of government agencies.
Mass arrests carried out by the Trump administration to curb immigration have created a new type of health emergency as the number of people detained reaches record levels. About 71,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, which shows most have no criminal records.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantánamo Bay will host the worst of the worst. » However, several news agencies reported that many of the men sent to the base had no criminal convictions. Up to 90 percent of them were described as “low risk” in a progress report written in May by a chaplain observing the inmates.
In fits and starts, the Trump administration has sent about 780 noncitizens to Guantánamo Bay, according to the New York Times. The numbers fluctuate as new detainees arrive and others are returned to the United States or deported.
Although some Public Health Service officials have provided medical care to detained immigrants in the past, this is the first time in American history that Guantanamo has been used to house immigrants who had been living in the United States. Agents said posts about ICE are becoming more common. After avoiding Guantanamo, Stewart was ordered to report to an ICE detention center in Texas.
“Public health workers are being asked to facilitate a man-made humanitarian crisis,” she said.
Seeing no option to refuse deployments she found objectionable, Stewart resigned after a decade of service. She would give up the prospect of a pension offered after 20 years.
“It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” she said. “It was my dream job.”
One of her PHS colleagues, nurse Dena Bushman, found herself grappling with a similar moral dilemma when she received a summons to report to Guantánamo a few weeks after the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August. Bushman, who was stationed at the CDC, was granted a medical waiver delaying his deployment due to stress and grief. She considered quitting, then did so.
