On tap: 5.5 million hours from workers trained to deal with ‘intersex, gender nonconforming’

The level of health-care services provided to illegal aliens is about to get a huge boost from the Obama administration, which is hiring contractors to provide the equivalent of 5.5 million additional labor hours of treatment to detainees.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, of the Department of Homeland Security did not provide an estimated cost of these support services over five years. It is leaving it up to vendors to propose how much it will cost.

According to a solicitation for bids that WND discovered through routine database research, the purpose of this initiative is “to provide on-site medical staffing services to provide a continuum of health care services to ICE residents/detainees 24 hours a day, seven (7) days per week, and 365 calendar days per year” at various clinic sites.

All of the treatment will come from workers who are screened to be politically correct.

Contractor employees working on this project must be U.S. citizens “except when special flights prohibit use of U.S. citizens.”

The contractors are expected to recruit “personnel who have demonstrated work experience in a diverse multicultural and multi-language environment.”

Ongoing training must include “how to communicate effectively and professionally with detainees, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming detainees.”

Private vendors will deliver a combination of medical, dental and mental-health services plus administrative staffing and nursing support, specifically to the ICE Health Services Corps, or IHSC, which already employs more than 900 personnel.

An exhaustive search of the FedBizOpps system revealed no IHSC healthcare-support activities of this magnitude in ICE’s history.

“In many instances, the care that detainees receive while in ICE custody is the first professional medical care of their adult lives,” IHSC touts on its website.

U.S. taxpayers also must bear the brunt of funding IHSC-approved off-site specialists, case management and emergency services for illegal aliens when necessary.

The ICE unit notes that annually it offers direct care to about 15,000 detainees housed at 21 facilities nationwide, as well as to oversee medical care of 17,000 additional detainees at non-IHSC detention facilities. The IHSC also provides medical support “during ICE enforcement operations in the air, on the ground and at sea.”

According to the 505-page solicitation and Statement of Work, or SOW, the overall ICE population amounts to 34,000 daily and 400,000 annual detainees with an average 30-day stay.
The document spells out in great detail what is expected in terms of contractor quality assurance, standards of conduct, monitoring of personnel, training and other federal requirements.

Although the SOW includes restrictions on intersex – male to female, and female to male – a pat-downs and physical searches, it simultaneously prohibits ICE and contractor personnel from insisting that detainees disclose their gender.

On the other hand, the SOW directs each facility to “consult a medical or mental health professional as soon as practicable” when needed in making gender-assessment or housing decisions.

Regardless of existing documentation of gender or even of direct observation of a detainee’s anatomy, contractor must give equal consideration of “a detainee’s self-identification of his/her gender and self-assessment of safety needs.”

This policy of allowing detainees to state their gender – even if contrary to anatomical fact and medical assessment – follows the directive of a recent ICE-wide memorandum titled “Further Guidance Regarding the Care of Transgender of Detainees,” which was made available by AmericanThinker.com.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Executive Director Thomas Homan in that memo directed that relevant ICE systems and forms be updated in anticipation of occurrences in which detainees identify themselves as belonging to a sex contrary to observable data or available documentation.

“Data systems should not use the category or header of ‘Gender’ to capture and record a detainee’s Sex,” the memo says. Those systems instead must have added to them “a data field, which may be in the form of a check-box, to record if the detainee identifies as ‘Transgender.’”

The memo offers an optional script to be considered when sexual identification is uncertain or ambiguous during initial processing. This script may be used under two general circumstances:

1) If a detainee “self-identifies as transgender or otherwise identifies with a gender different from that which corresponds with his or her biological sex (e.g., a biological male who identifies as a woman);” or:

2) “If he or she may be at an elevated risk in a detention setting because of his or her actual or perceived gender identity and/or gender expression… [then the interviewer could] ask if the detainee would like to formally disclose his or her gender identity.”

One potential question to pose is “Do you wish to disclose your gender identity (please note you are not required to disclose information about your gender identity which you are not comfortable sharing)?”

If the detainee answers “yes,” ICE personnel should then ask, and note, if that person identifies as a man, a woman, or as transgender.

According to ICE, during FY2012 [the latest period for which such ICE information is available], the following number and types of health care services were provided:

• Intake Screenings: 220,574
• Physical Exams: 104,650
• Sick Calls: 137,561
• Urgent Care Visits: 16,201
• Emergency Room/Off-Site Referrals: 13,503
• Dental Visits: 34,754
• Mental Health Interventions: 54,969
• Chronic Disease Interventions: 135,757
• Prescriptions Filled: 327,179

In a typical day: IHSC provides over 600 health screenings, approximately 300 physical exams, and over 400 sick call and urgent care visits.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/obama-gives-illegals-massive-health-care-plan/