Abstract

The US has built the most extensive immigration detention system globally. Over the last three administrations, several organizations have noted a systemic failure in the provision of health care in detention centers, leading to the torture and death of immigrants. This essay develops the principle of the preferential option for the poor to examine the causes of deficient access to health care and solutions to overcome them. It analyzes the substandard health care in detention centers from the notion of structural violence and systematizes solutions of grassroots immigrant organizations from the idea of solidarity, understood here as a form of friendship with the poor that moves toward relational justice. Its goal is to build bridges between people so that the political will is generated to create policies to improve and enforce health care standards in detention centers and address the unjust foundations of immigration detention.