The family of a Nicaraguan asylum-seeker who died from an undiagnosed blood clot is suing the operator of a privately-run Aurora detention center that they say ignored his pleas for help following a pattern of preventable detainee deaths.
Dorling Peralta Rivera, wife of Melvin Ariel Calero Mendoza, and their two children say Mendoza languished inside the Aurora Contract Detention Facility as he tried at least three times to get treated for severe pain in his right leg.
On Oct. 13, 2022, Mendoza collapsed inside a common area at the facility. An hour and a half later, he was pronounced dead from what forensic examiners would later determine was a blood clot that had likely traveled from his lower extremities into his lungs.
“The final days of Melvin’s life were spent in unbearable pain,” the lawsuit filed last week in Adams County District Court says. “Melvin’s death was entirely preventable. … Melvin received cursory, careless and plainly inappropriate medical treatment consisting of over-the-counter pain medications and ice packs for his leg.”
The GEO Group, which manages the facility on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment. ICE spokesman Steve Kotecki wrote in an email the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
At the time of Mendoza’s death, the facility employed one licensed physician, Cary Walker, who is named along with The GEO Group as a defendant. Serving under Walker were one physician assistant, eight registered nurses and six licensed practical nurses for the facility’s 1,500 or so detainees, according to the lawsuit.
Licensed practical nurses at the facility were allegedly expected to act outside of the scope of their training and were often responsible for diagnosing and preparing treatment plans despite the job requiring less training than the other classifications.
The lawsuit states the facility consistently failed to meet national health care standards and cites years of concerns about detainees’ inability to access medical care raised by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties as well as third parties such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
Reflecting on their 2018 visit to the facility to investigate complaints as part of an Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties team, in a report obtained by NPR, one medical doctor observed “serval areas of poor performance, some of which rise to the level of an unsafe environment of detention, and care that puts the health and wellbeing of … detainees at risk.”
The doctor noted some detainees were diagnosed with serious conditions, such as HIV and diabetes, and never treated or even told about the diagnoses, among other shortcomings.
A 2019 report by the ACLU — which relied on site visits, government records and first-hand accounts of detainees — also described conditions at the facility as “inhumane” and “atrocious,” and recounted multiple stories of detainees suffering from delayed or inadequate medical care.
Some of the same stories are mentioned in the lawsuit by Mendoza’s family, like that of Kamyar Samimi, who died of a heart attack following weeks of opioid withdrawals, which can cause elevated heart rate and which staffers at the facility failed to treat as Samimi sat in solitary confinement.
In the case of another detainee, Evalin-Ali Mandza, it took nearly an hour for the facility to call 911 after Mandza began complaining of chest pain. Mandza died when he was finally taken to a hospital and went into cardiac arrest.
A fumbled 911 call also figured in the case of Mendoza, whose condition and location were represented inaccurately when an employee of the facility called for an ambulance.
The lawsuit says the 39-year-old’s death devastated his wife and children, who had hoped to one day reunite with Mendoza in the United States. An avid soccer fan and follower of FC Barcelona, Mendoza was born in Nicaragua and met his wife in high school. The two welcomed their first child in 2007, followed by a second in 2015.
“Melvin and Dorling desired a better life for themselves and their two young children,” the lawsuit by Mendoza’s family says. “Nicaragua had become dangerous and untenable. Political turmoil had shaken the country for years, food prices were rising and gang violence was rampant.”
Rivera was the first to make the journey to the U.S., settling in Florida in 2020. Mendoza followed in 2022, leaving their children with a grandparent and reaching the U.S.-Mexico border in April 2022.
ICE determined that Mendoza would be detained while he pursued his asylum claim, transporting him to Aurora in May 2022.
On Aug. 31, 2022, Mendoza asked to see a doctor because of pain and swelling in his right foot, the lawsuit says. He met with a licensed practical nurse the next day and described a “stabbing pain” in his right foot “that was 10 out of 10 in severity.”
He told the nurse that he had injured the foot while playing soccer two and a half weeks prior, but that the pain had worsened when he climbed into his upper bunk bed Aug. 31.
His blood pressure was elevated, as it had been when he first arrived. The nurse gave Mendoza acetaminophen and ibuprofen, told him not to put weight on the leg, and said he should contact staffers again if the pain persisted or got worse.
“Had the LPN referred Melvin to a higher-level provider for further evaluation, the provider could have given Melvin further work-up to rule out a musculoskeletal injury as the source of his pain,” the lawsuit says, adding that this could have led to the timely diagnosis of the blood clot in Mendoza’s leg.
Mendoza again spoke with a nurse on Sept. 12 and Sept. 28 to report ongoing, severe foot and leg pain. Both times, he was sent away with the same medication and directions, despite also having a low blood oxygen saturation on the last visit.
After Mendoza collapsed in a common area of his housing unit Oct. 13, facility staffers found him partially conscious, pale and sweaty. He was transported to an intake area on a gurney and indicated that he was experiencing abdominal pain.
When a guard called 911, he was unable to answer basic questions about the facility and Mendoza’s condition, having to ask another guard twice for the facility’s address and telling the dispatcher that he did not know what symptoms Mendoza was experiencing other than it being a “medical emergency.”
The guard also misjudged Mendoza’s age and had to put the phone down for multiple minutes while trying to learn more about the situation.
Mendoza was loaded into an ambulance about 20 minutes after the 911 call and 24 minutes after he had collapsed. By the time he arrived at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, he had no pulse and could not be resuscitated.
“In the weeks leading (up) to Melvin’s death, GEO had at least three separate chances to diagnose and treat the blood clot in Melvin’s leg but failed to do so, causing his death,” the lawsuit says.
Mendoza’s family is seeking unspecified damages for the facility’s treatment of Mendoza.
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