It’s hard to settle on the most unnerving part about Aurora’s GEO Group ICE prison employees killing Nicaraguan Melvin Ariel Calero-Mendoza last fall.
After learning the facts of the horrific case of the 41-year-old asylum seeker — which have taken Herculean efforts from journalists to obtain — there’s little doubt left in the minds of rational people that the privately run GEO Group ICE Detention Center employees are responsible for his cruel death.
What’s unclear at this point, even after listening to a terrifying 911 call made by an ICE worker to Aurora police and fire dispatchers, is how to levy the blame.
It could be that the GEO ICE warehouse in Aurora is staffed with teams of vapid and incompetent guards and nurses. It could be that it’s vastly mismanaged, inflicting pain and tragedy not just on its victim-inmates, but its employees as well.
Or it could be that a deadly cocktail of some or all of this is responsible for the consistent, and even deadly, abuse of people who in most cases have not committed or even been accused of a criminal act.
Despite the misinformation, and even disinformation, perpetuated by some local, state and national officials, the prisoners of the ghastly ICE warehouses here and across the country are held and abused only because of their lack of immigration documentation.
In some cases, they haven’t even been adjudicated for having violated federal immigration rules and regulations, which, all by themselves are an unjust, politicized morass.
The attitude by anti-immigrant xenophobes, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Colorado Congressperson Lauren Boebert, is a repugnant “too-bad-so-sad” mantra, intimating or outright insisting that if you don’t want to die in an American ICE warehouse, stay home or immigrate somewhere else.
For too many political leaders, immigrants and refugees in Colorado don’t even warrant the hollow “thoughts and prayers” that Americans boasting their bonafides get from political “freedom warriors.”
Calero-Mendoza sure didn’t.
He ended up in Aurora’s GEO ICE warehouse in May 2022 after being confronted by immigration officials in Texas while trying to get into the United States.
In early August 2022, Calero-Mendoza was playing soccer with other detainees at the ICE warehouse and injured his big toe, according to coroner reports.
Weeks later, on Sept 1, 2022, he reported to a licensed practical nurse working at the ICE warehouse that was still having severe pain. She gave him generic Tylenol and Advil and told him to stay off his foot.
Twelve days later, the pain, and his condition, worsened.
The treatment was the same.
On Sept. 29, 2022, his condition had become serious and he was experiencing pain and swelling in his right calf. A licensed practical nurse documented the swelling and loss of ability in his leg. The nurse prescribed more Advil.
Oct. 5, 2022, Calero-Mendoza was ordered by a judge to leave the country. He wasn’t immediately ejected to allow for any possible appeals, according to Sentinel reports.
On Oct. 13, 2022, at 10:49 a.m., a GEO employee alerted a nurse that Calero-Mendoza was having a medical emergency. “He appeared pale, (sweaty), cold, clammy, and the RN observed foamy saliva from the corner of his mouth, and the loss of bladder control.”
Three minutes later, an employee somewhere else in the facility was told to call 911. It took nearly 20 minutes for an Aurora ambulance to roll up to the facility amid stunning confusion created by the 911 caller.
By the time Calero-Mendoza got to nearby University Hospital, he was dead.
As egregious pathetic as his medical treatment was, for weeks, trapped inside the GEO facility, the 911 call illustrated a new low-bar for the GEO warehouse.
For months, the Sentinel was unable to not only get a recording of the 911 call from local fire or ICE officials, no one would even provide clarity for weeks about how Calero-Mendoza actually even got to the hospital.
National Public Radio, with power of lawyers and persistence, last month finally got the recording and thousands of pages of documents from this case and others from across the country.
Take the time to listen to seven agonizing minutes as an unnamed Aurora GEO employee fumbles through a simple call and even repeatedly puts the 911 dispatcher on hold while trying to find out even the address of the GEO ICE warehouse, basically what Calero-Mendoza’s medical emergency was and even his approximate age.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE 911 CALL AND READ THE COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO STORY or go to https://ow.ly/sruQ50PPkgj.
Just like on TV, the 911 dispatcher asked the GEO employee for the address and nature of the emergency.
The Aurora center, available anywhere on the Googles, is 3130 Oakland St.
The GEO guard starts out, “11901 N. Oakland St.”
Silence, then the dispatcher says that’s not an address.
It then becomes a cavalcade of cruel comedy as the guard keeps supplying different addresses, yelling to someone within earshot about the unknown location he worked.
It gets so much worse.
The guard doesn’t even know why he’s calling 911. Somebody inside the facility was “code blue,” he said. No one, including the dispatcher, seemed to know what that actually means.
The guard doesn’t have any idea how old Calero-Mendoza is. He offers up that there are no juveniles in the GEO center so he’s “over 21.”
Someone at the GEO facility guesses Calero-Mendoza is in his late 40s. He was 39.
The dispatcher patiently explains that if the health emergency is for someone elderly, it makes a big difference to rescuers.
She gets put on hold. Repeatedly. One hold episode was for nearly a minute.
Finally, the guard can’t tell the dispatcher how an ambulance is supposed to get into the secure facility, what the medical emergency is or how dire the situation has become.
An illustration of the sadistic and deadly problem inside the Aurora GEO Group ICE warehouse spelled out on that day between 10:49 a.m. and 12:32 p.m., when hospital doctors officially declared Calero-Mendoza dead.
It’ll be up to real medical experts and the courts to map out in detail how staff, supervisors and owners of the Aurora GEO ICE warehouse imposed a death sentence on Calero-Mendoza, who came here to escape the kind of thing that killed him.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Bleeding heart woke Dave Perry using his platform to slam Republicans saying they are against immigration. No Dave, they are against illegal immigration. Anyone entering the US illegally is a law breaker. You live in a predominantly white neighborhood that for the most part is pretty secure, but you sure are good at telling everyone else who have to deal with the ramifications of illegal immigration how they should act and live their lives. You are a joke, and always have been.
Same old MAGA response: if you can’t attack the issue, attack the messenger. What do you think of the person losing his life while in US custody?