The ICE Handbook Tells A Damning Story About The Death of Renee Good
A Tragedy That Should Never Have Happened
The death of Renee Good while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody represents far more than just another tragic statistic in America’s immigration detention system. It tells a deeply troubling story about institutional failures, ignored warning signs, and the devastating human cost of policies that prioritize enforcement over basic human dignity and medical care. Renee Good’s case, when examined through the lens of ICE’s own operational handbook and established protocols, reveals a pattern of negligence and disregard that ultimately cost a vulnerable person their life. Her story forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about how immigrants are treated in detention facilities across the United States and raises serious questions about accountability, oversight, and the very nature of our immigration enforcement system.
When we look at the details surrounding Renee Good’s death and compare them to the standards outlined in ICE’s own handbook—the document that theoretically governs how detained individuals should be treated—the contradictions become impossible to ignore. The handbook contains extensive provisions regarding medical care, mental health services, suicide prevention, and the humane treatment of detainees. These aren’t just suggestions; they’re supposed to be mandatory standards that every ICE facility must follow. Yet Renee’s case demonstrates a chasm between written policy and actual practice, between what ICE claims to do and what actually happens behind the walls of detention centers. This gap isn’t just an administrative oversight or a minor procedural failure—it’s a systemic problem that has life-and-death consequences for real people.
The Standards That Were Supposed to Protect Her
ICE’s operational handbook is remarkably comprehensive when it comes to the care that detained individuals are supposed to receive. The document outlines detailed protocols for initial medical screenings, ongoing healthcare, mental health assessments, and emergency medical interventions. According to these standards, every person entering ICE custody should receive a thorough medical evaluation within their first days of detention. This screening is supposed to identify any existing health conditions, medications the person might need, mental health concerns, or suicide risk factors. The handbook emphasizes that detention facilities must provide a level of medical care that meets constitutional standards and professional medical guidelines.
Furthermore, the handbook contains specific provisions for vulnerable populations, including individuals with chronic illnesses, mental health conditions, and those who might be at risk of self-harm. These protocols exist precisely because ICE and the government acknowledge that detention itself can be traumatic and that the agency has a responsibility to protect the health and safety of people in its custody. The standards mandate regular checks on vulnerable individuals, proper documentation of medical complaints and treatments, timely responses to medical emergencies, and coordination with appropriate medical specialists when needed. On paper, these protections seem robust and comprehensive. They suggest a system designed to prevent exactly the kind of tragedy that befell Renee Good.
The Reality of What Actually Happened
The facts of Renee Good’s case paint a starkly different picture from the protective framework outlined in ICE’s handbook. Rather than receiving the careful, attentive medical care that the handbook promises, the evidence suggests that warning signs were missed, medical complaints were dismissed or inadequately addressed, and the protocols designed to protect vulnerable detainees were either not followed or were so poorly implemented as to be meaningless. The specific details of her decline while in custody reveal a pattern of neglect that should trouble anyone who believes in basic human rights and dignity.
Those familiar with her case describe a situation where obvious signs of distress were overlooked or minimized. Medical requests that should have triggered immediate action were instead delayed or denied. The mental health support that ICE’s own standards require was either absent or woefully inadequate. In the critical hours and days before her death, opportunities to intervene—moments when proper medical attention could have potentially saved her life—were lost. This wasn’t simply bad luck or an unforeseeable medical emergency; it was a preventable death that occurred because the systems that were supposed to protect Renee Good failed her at every turn. The contrast between what should have happened according to the handbook and what actually occurred couldn’t be more stark or more damning.
Why the System Failed and Continues to Fail
Understanding Renee Good’s death requires looking beyond individual failures to examine the systemic issues that make such tragedies not just possible but almost inevitable within the current immigration detention framework. One fundamental problem is the lack of meaningful oversight and accountability. While ICE facilities are theoretically required to follow the standards laid out in the handbook, there’s often little external monitoring to ensure compliance. Inspections, when they occur, may be announced in advance, giving facilities time to temporarily improve conditions. Independent medical and legal advocates often have limited access to detained individuals, making it difficult to identify problems before they become fatal.
Another critical factor is the profit motive inherent in many detention facilities. A significant portion of immigration detention occurs in privately operated facilities where financial incentives can conflict with providing adequate care. When companies are paid per detainee per day, there’s an economic interest in keeping beds filled and costs down, which can translate to cutting corners on medical staff, mental health services, and overall conditions. Medical personnel in these facilities may be overworked, undertrained, or pressured to minimize costs by avoiding expensive treatments or specialist referrals. This environment creates conditions where someone like Renee Good can deteriorate without receiving appropriate care.
Additionally, there’s the issue of how detained immigrants are perceived and valued within the system. Despite the formal language of the handbook about dignity and appropriate care, the reality is that detained immigrants often face dehumanizing treatment. Their complaints may be dismissed as attempts to game the system, their pain may be minimized or disbelieved, and their fundamental humanity may be overlooked by staff who view them primarily as case numbers or security threats rather than as people deserving of compassion and proper medical attention. This cultural problem within immigration enforcement creates an environment where handbook standards can be routinely violated without consequence.
The Broader Implications and What Must Change
Renee Good’s death isn’t an isolated incident—it’s part of a documented pattern of inadequate medical care, preventable deaths, and accountability failures within immigration detention. Her case serves as a devastating reminder that immigration policy isn’t abstract; it has real consequences for real people. When we create systems that detain thousands of people, often for civil immigration violations rather than criminal offenses, we take on an absolute responsibility to ensure their safety and wellbeing. The failure to meet that responsibility, as demonstrated so clearly in Renee’s case, represents both a moral failure and a violation of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual treatment.
The gap between ICE’s handbook standards and actual practice demands systemic reform. This means implementing robust, independent oversight with unannounced inspections and real consequences for facilities that violate standards. It means ensuring that detained individuals have meaningful access to medical care, mental health services, and legal advocates who can identify problems early. It means reconsidering the entire model of mass immigration detention and exploring alternatives that don’t involve warehousing people in conditions where their health and safety cannot be adequately protected. It means treating compliance with medical care standards not as optional or aspirational, but as the bare minimum requirement for any facility that holds human beings. Most fundamentally, it means remembering that people like Renee Good are not statistics or case files—they’re human beings whose lives have value and whose deaths should matter enough to spark genuine change. Until that change comes, her death stands as a damning indictment of a system that has lost sight of the humanity of those it detains.
