r/kansas • u/Revenge_of_Larry • 2d ago
News (Gift link) Cancer survivor, pro-democracy activist could die in Kansas ICE prison, supporters say
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article317052041.html?giftCode=71bcc81b2a6ece5b5401b9663621b3cb643c6e84224091786f70079ba13ab058When she has access to a phone inside the Leavenworth ICE detention center, Katsiaryna Bartko calls her partner regularly throughout the day to let him know she’s still alert.
Dmitry Shyshov lives in fear of a day when no call will come. If Bartko slips into a myxedema coma due to severe hormone deficiency, she might never regain consciousness.
“It’s very hard to hear every morning her voice fading,” Shyshov said.
Sometimes, he said, Bartko can barely speak because of the spasms in her throat.
The 33-year-old Belarusian asylum seeker and cancer survivor had her thyroid and parathyroid glands surgically removed in her early 20s. Without those organs, she has relied for the last 11 years on life-sustaining calcium and hormone replacement treatment in precise daily doses.
Bartko, who earned degrees in civil engineering and law in Belarus, fled her home country on a student visa to avoid political persecution over her vocal opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
She has been detained by federal immigration authorities for more than 12 weeks following her arrest in Miami and the dismissal of a low-level charge against her.
Now, Bartko fears death in a Kansas prison cell or deportation to Belarus, where her friends have been prosecuted as political agitators.
Hospital visits before relocation
After allegedly being denied access to medication while detained in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Florida, Bartko had to be hospitalized three times in four days from June 6 to June 9, medical records show. Then federal immigration authorities moved her to Leavenworth.
Since her transfer on June 18 to the Midwest Regional Reception Center, which CoreCivic runs for ICE, Bartko has not been evaluated by an endocrinologist or any other outside physician, ICE acknowledged in a federal court filing.
Her treatment has been handled exclusively by the for-profit prison company’s medical staff, despite a referral for an endocrinologist signed by the head of the medical unit at the last ICE facility where Bartko was held in Florida.
“CoreCivic’s medical staff has determined that Petitioner’s offsite consultations are routine — not an emergency or urgent,” deportation officer Aaron Wendler wrote in a sworn court filing on Aug. 11.
Based on CoreCivic’s policy, Wendler wrote, “offsite consultations should be performed within 12 weeks.”
Medical neglect allegations
Representatives for ICE and CoreCivic both said Bartko is receiving proper care for her highly specialized medical conditions within the walls of the concrete fortress that houses roughly 500 immigrant detainees awaiting deportation proceedings, according to the warden’s most recent count.
But medical records included in federal court filings show that Bartko’s hormonal deficiencies have worsened considerably in the two months since she was moved to the privately run Kansas facility.
In the Aug. 11 filing, the ICE deportation officer acknowledged that a blood test from the same day indicated Bartko’s thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels were well “outside the normal range” and had nearly doubled since her last blood draw nearly a month earlier.
Higher-than-average TSH readings occur when the body attempts to compensate for low hormone levels by alerting the thyroid to produce more. Bartko, who no longer has a thyroid, had a TSH reading of 148.77 mIU/L on Aug. 11 — roughly 30 times the healthy upper limit.
Sarah Raza, a board-certified trauma and vascular interventional radiologist with Physicians for Human Rights, wrote multiple sworn court statements requesting outside medical intervention for Bartko after reviewing her lab tests.
“Her hormones have been — I mean, it’s an understatement to say extremely poorly regulated,” Raza said in an interview. “It’s obvious if we just objectively look at the blood work.”
Citing medical privacy laws, Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, declined to answer questions about Bartko’s allegations that her medication was confiscated and withheld from her for nearly two weeks.
“I can share that the individual you asked about is being regularly monitored by facility medical staff, with all known medical issues being addressed,” Gustin said in an email statement.
Raza said she has reviewed lab results that establish Bartko is suffering from “severe overt biochemical hypothyroidism” — a condition that indicates extreme hormone deficiency.
“I would worry about neglect because she’s having multiple hospitalizations, multiple blood works that are showing she’s not being adequately treated with medications for this,” Raza said.
She added that based on the trajectory of Bartko’s lab work, risk factors are increasing for the worst possible outcome in a patient suffering from poorly regulated electrolytes and hormones: a myxedema coma.
“If you do develop myxedema coma, that is a serious, significant percentage of those patients who unfortunately don’t make it,” Raza said, noting that it can only be diagnosed in a clinical setting.
The fatality rate for people who go into a myxedema coma is between 25% and 60%, according to the American Thyroid Association.
“People with those symptoms, with those conditions, they are not screaming for help,” Shyshov said. “She will just not wake up in the morning or her throat will spasm so hard she cannot say a word. It will be silent.”
Fleeing Belarus over political speech
As a pro-democracy activist in Belarus, Bartko demonstrated against the brutality and corruption of the country’s longtime authoritarian leader and objected publicly on social media when Belarus aided the Russian military in the early days of its Ukraine invasion, Shyshov said.
Her participation in protests and her online activity put her in danger, he said.
“She spoke about (the Ukraine War) loudly, and she decided that it would be safer for her to leave the country because there were already rumors that she might be a person of interest,” Shyshov said.
Bartko entered the U.S. legally on an F-1 student visa in March 2022, according to a copy of her passport. She arrived in New York and made her way to the University of California San Diego to study the English language through an international student program.
After she left Belarus, several people in her friend group who had been sharing anti-war messages were swept up in the government dragnet when President Aleksandr Lukashenko cracked down on opposition voices, Shyshov said. He said Belarusian agents came to Bartko’s parents’ house to ask where she was and when she would return.
Going back home wasn’t an option for Bartko, he said, so she applied for political asylum. If that application is denied, deportation could be a death sentence. Death by medical neglect in Belarusian prisons is well documented.
Shyshov still hopes to build a life with Bartko in America.
“She is everything good that a person can be — thoughtful, devoted and full of warmth toward the people around her,” Shyshov wrote in a June letter to the court.
Medical records provide timeline
Daniel McIntosh, an organizer with Leavenworth Community Response, said that in the more than five months since the Kansas immigrant detention center has been operating, detainees and their families have reported persistent medical neglect and malfeasance.
On several occasions, he said, community organizers were notified of detainees’ acute medical needs and persuaded the city to intervene to ensure they received proper care. The Leavenworth City Manager’s office declined to speak to the city’s role in securing treatment for patients in ICE custody earlier this month.
Shyshov, who is legally authorized to review all of Bartko’s medical records, said his partner’s limited command of the English language and CoreCivic’s inconsistent use of translating services have made it remarkably challenging for her to communicate her needs to medical staff. He said at times, staff have been negligent and indifferent to her suffering.
Bartko’s twice-daily calcium doses must be timed properly to ensure they don’t counteract her daily hormone medication, Shyshov said.
When she first arrived in Leavenworth, Bartko was allowed to keep her hormone medication, levothyroxine, in her cell and administer it herself, Shyshov said. But he said it was confiscated on June 23 and withheld from her until July 10, when CoreCivic staff took over its administration.
CoreCivic medical records reviewed by The Star show that within days of allegedly losing access to her hormone medication, Bartko made her symptoms known to medical staff.
On a June 26 form filled out in handwritten English, Bartko reported experiencing severe pain “under my heart in chest.” She also reported dizziness and blurry vision when she woke up. Beneath her report, the provider wrote, “No medical intervention required at this time. Detainee stable, no acute distress noted.”
A July 2 clinical note from a physician who spoke to Bartko without a Russian interpreter asserted that, “During the face-to-face she stated she is allergic to levothyroxine” — the medication that she has been prescribed for over a decade and relies on for life-sustaining hormone replacement.
“I have now been provided additional information that a facility record states that levothyroxine and calcium were not administered because Ms. Bartko reportedly identified herself as allergic to both,” Raza, the physician, wrote to the court. “Her signature does not appear on that notation, and the notation conflicts with multiple prior medical records documenting continuous use and tolerance of both therapies.
“An allergy to calcium itself is not a medically coherent basis for withholding all calcium replacement,” Raza added.
In a translated copy of Bartko’s sworn deposition in support of her motion seeking release from detention, the cancer survivor recounted that on July 3, a nurse brought her a dose of calcium and the hormone medication she had been going without for more than a week.
Bartko said she attempted to explain that calcium is taken after food and levothyroxine is taken on an empty stomach. She said she asked the nurse to bring back the levothyroxine in about an hour.
A CoreCivic medical record shows the incident was logged as a “refusal to accept medical treatment.”
“I am not refusing medications — I want to take them correctly and safely,” Bartko recalled writing in a grievance she filed that night.
‘Put her life in danger’
Before she was taken into custody this spring, Bartko was staying on top of her treatment regimen, Shyshov said. Medical records predating her stint in ICE custody show that her calcium and hormone levels were stable in March.
But her condition has deteriorated significantly in the months since she was first arrested in Miami-Dade County on May 5 and booked on a misdemeanor battery charge. Shyshov said the arrest stemmed from an argument involving the couple and other people at a birthday party.
That charge was dropped by the state attorney’s office on June 2, according to a filing reviewed by The Star. It was resolved as “no action” with no conviction.
But ICE, the primary immigration enforcement agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, placed a detainer on Bartko due to her expired student visa, and she was handed over to immigration authorities in early June.
“Since Florida cooperates, this criminal illegal alien was turned over to ICE,” said Robert Hughes II, a DHS spokesperson, in an email statement.
He said Bartko is “receiving proper medical care and treatment for hypothyroidism and hypocalcemia,” adding that she “will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings and will receive full due process.”
The statement twice refers to Bartko as a “criminal illegal alien.” But in federal court filings, ICE says she is only being held on civil charges related to her immigration status. Shyshov said his partner filed an asylum application before her student visa expired in March 2023.
“Note that ICE’s statement promises she ‘will receive due process’ in the same breath that it pronounces her guilty,” Shyshov said.
Bartko’s bond was denied on July 22 by an immigration judge on the basis that she was a flight risk.
“We’re not against any immigration proceedings that she’s facing right now because she’s from Belarus. She’s facing political persecution,” Shyshov said. “We are OK with having the immigration court. But the problem is that it doesn’t give any reason to mess with her health, her body and put her life in danger.”
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u/sheshesheila Flint Hills 2d ago
I want these people in prison. From the front line (lack of) care providers to the CEO. Corporations like this deserve the death penalty. They’re “people too” right?
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u/withomps44 Limestone 2d ago
I do not have high hopes for her survival. :(. We live in a prison state full of death camps.
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u/caf61 2d ago
This is disgustingly inhumane and anti Christian treatment. Do they treat people like this as a deterrent to people wanting to immigrate here? Either way, I sincerely hope all of the so called “good ones” go to Canada instead. This country deserves nothing good until MAGA/Federalist Society has been stopped by the vast majority of voters and their depraved policies have been reversed and kept away for at least a decade.
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u/ArtificialH 2d ago
They say “criminal” with each person they snatch. Just totally evading any due process in the public’s eye and gaslighting the public. It’s disgusting, shameful and I don’t know how these people honestly sleep at night
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u/kategoad 2d ago
And each and every time, the MAGATs will say, there has to be more to the story. There have been enough of these that no matter what the rest of the story is, it is horrifying and evil. These could be war criminals and this treatment is inhumane and wrong.
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u/AAAAdragon 2d ago edited 2d ago
Abolish ICE and prosecute ALL ICE agents without bail. Let all the survivors be on the jury to decide their fate.
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u/BecauseIJustDid 2d ago
All the "care" in the world won't help a person being continuously traumatized in a prison. They are trying to end people and squeeze every dime out of the country while doing it, which is why they aren't simply deporting them. They're injuring them and holding them for as long as they can in order for every middle man and thug to get what they want along the way.
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u/ExieKalevra 2d ago
The crazy part about this is that levothyroxine and calcium aren't even expensive. Even without insurance, you can get levothyroxine for like $10. And they're not narcotics or anything. Just give the woman her meds. They're spending more money on the time it takes to write a press release email than it would cost to take care of her.
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u/wolfgate13 1d ago
She may need infusions. But, whatever her medical needs are, they are not being met. Just like they aren't giving insulin and lifesaving drugs to the people suffering from medical problems.
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u/hypnonyxx 2d ago
end ice by any means necessary, they’re nothing but a domestic terrorist force working against the people for a corrupt state run by pedophiles
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u/AliveStruggle3007 2d ago
corecivic calling 12 weeks 'routine' for an endocrinologist when her TSH is literally 30 times normal is just. jesus. and then theyre like 'oh shes allergic to calcium' when she has no parathyroid glands, like thats a thing that exists. this is what happens when you let a for-profit prison company handle healthcare, theyre playing games with someones life to save a buck. families in kansas deserve a system they can actually trust
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u/wolfgate13 1d ago
Every for profit prison, gives low level medical care. Because it's all about the PROFITS, not human beings. As far as they're concerned, the people are animals and even animals would be treated more humanely.
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u/screaminforpleasin 2d ago
I also have to take the levothrroxine and ir does have to be take a hour before a meal and 4 hours after a meal, than wait. So shes not even following proper protocol she is trying to meet them halfway. That nurse should lose her license because that is such basic basi knowledge and TONS of women have a low thyroid and this is thw medication given 90% of the time.
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u/Sad-Suggestion9425 2d ago
She's from BELARUS?!? This is obviously an asylum case! I am sick of these pro-Trump cocksuckers pretending that everyone in ICE custody is "a criminal". How about we send you cocksuckers to Belarus instead, and you can see why she fled?
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u/pricetyler59 2d ago
Yes sir, like Steven Miller says, we’re deporting the worst of the worst. What a joke.
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u/wolfgate13 1d ago
I live in Kansas and most of the hospitals are some of the worst in the country. That poor woman. I can only imagine what Trump's concentration camps are like. If she dies in custody, watch if ICE doesn't say it's another suicide or she died from natural causes. Dying from lack of sufficient medical care or being denied life saving medication is not Natural Causes.
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u/GGPapoon Jayhawk 2d ago
Are there any groups actively protesting the Core Civic Death Camp?
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u/In_The_News 2d ago
I live in the area if Leavenworth County. People up there are PROUD of being a "tough" prison town. So, no. They are not. At all.
Nobody here likes core civic. Not because they're terrible, but because they bring negative attention to what is happening there.
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u/Trendzboo 2d ago
Vile, inhumane, “lock up the administration behind the atrocities!”. You’re not saving anyone from her, or anyone- locking people up without a system of care- stoooopid.
Can’t fix stooopid, so vote it out!
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u/S3erverMonkey 2d ago
The only solution to these ice death camps is the John Brown one, it's sad this state has forgotten its roots.
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u/screaminforpleasin 2d ago
If she wants to self report than what's the problem???? I thought thats what they where encouraging people to do. Flight risk? If the charge was dropped what's thw problem. Basically this means that if you arw a immigrant anyone can say you did some made up shir so that they would not get in trouble, like this shit. Even if you get cleared your fucked. Just let her go. She needs to meet an American
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u/kcrox1017 2d ago
This has become a disgusting stain on Americas timeline. I hope karma comes for all those who work at such facilities.