Four Out of Five Chemotherapy Sessions
Oudone Lothirath, a Minnesota man with aggressive lymphoma, missed four of five scheduled chemotherapy sessions while in ICE detention in Texas in January; he was returned to Minnesota only after a hospital letter warned he would die without treatment, and he is now in hospice.
#bureaucratic cruelty #civilian harm
Oudone Lothirath, a Minnesota resident undergoing chemotherapy for aggressive lymphoma, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in January and held in a Texas facility. Of the five chemotherapy sessions scheduled during the period of his detention, he missed four. He received no medical care while in custody. After ten days, ICE released him — not in response to a lawsuit but to a letter from M Health Fairview stating that he would “succumb” without ongoing treatment. The Department of Homeland Security has dismissed reports of inadequate medical care as “false.”
Lothirath was hospitalized on arrival in the Twin Cities with a bladder infection and sepsis. A scan in March showed the lymphoma had spread into his bone marrow during the interruption. He entered hospice on March 20. The article notes that his case is unusually well-documented — his caregiver kept correspondence; the hospital wrote a letter on the record — but situates it within a broader pattern of GoFundMe pages, untreated injuries, denied medications, and missed surgeries that other detained immigrants have left behind in fragments.