An Albanian man’s pain grew so unbearable, he said, that he pulled out his own tooth as he languished for months in a New Mexico immigration detention centre. A Honduran mother of two said she was hospitalised for a heart problem after she was denied blood pressure medication while held in Florida. A Venezuelan man said his leg grew purple and swollen from flesh-eating bacteria when staff at a Vermont facility did not take him to a scheduled doctor’s appointment.

And families are left with impossible choices

An Albanian man’s pain grew so unbearable, he said, that he pulled out his own tooth as he languished for months in a New Mexico immigration detention centre. A Honduran mother of…