Detaining Care, Part Three: Andre's story
Andre Osborne is a Jamaican immigrant who has bipolar disorder. He was detained in New York in 2008 over a 15-year-old drug charge, and taken to the Willacy Immigration Detention Center in Texas.
In detention, doctors gave Osborne a cocktail of new drugs and dramatically increased his dosage.
He was so over-medicated that he rolled off of the top of a bunk bed and badly injured his face and eyes. Though he was taken to and from the hospital by ambulance, and received multiple stitches in his face, Osborne remained unconscious through the entire 19-hour episode.
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Editor’s Note: This is the third and final part of Detaining Care, a series by the Texas Tribune exploring mental health care in federally monitored Texas lockups for immigrants awaiting deportation hearings. The investigation revealed huge shortages of adequate care — and in some cases, of any care at all.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization that operates www.texastribune.org. Its mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern through original journalism and on-the-record, open-to-the-public events.
