USA: Release Diabetic At Risk
Timofei Kocheshkov, age 21 is a Russian national who fled Russia seeking political asylum with his older brother and parents in 2024. Timofei and his older brother Vadim entered the U.S. in May 2024 through California. Despite entering with a CBP One appointment, they were immediately detained and were sent to Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California. In the fall of 2024 Timofei and Vadim were transferred to Folkston Detention Center in Folkston, Georgia. Their parents remain in detention in Arizona.
Timofei was diagnosed with Diabetes at five years old. Since his transfer to Folkston, Timofei has not received adequate glucose monitoring, insulin, or food which have dramatically impacted his health. Timofei has seen medical staff at Folkston and detailed in his affidavit and incident reports that he was misdiagnosed, given the wrong type of insulin despite repeatedly asking for the correct medication, doses and glucose monitoring. In his written statement seeking help Timofei says, “Every time I ask for medical help, I have to wait weeks to see a doctor. Doctors have told me that they cannot treat me properly in here. My life every day is closer to hell. My limbs might be amputated; I may fall into a coma and die.” Timofei’s older brother shared, “I don’t know how to encourage him anymore — every day it is breaking him down both mentally and physically.”
Complaints against the treatment of people detained at the Folkston Detention Center led to a visit by DHS’s inspector general’s office in November 2021. The investigators spent two days at the facility interviewing staff and individuals detained there and reviewing facility operations and medical records of the foreign nationals. Their report released to Congress found numerous abuses “that compromised the health, safety, and rights of detainees.”
The GEO Group was just awarded a $47 million contract to turn a private prison in Georgia into an expanded immigration detention facility. The result will be a nearly 3,000-bed complex, making it the largest immigrant detention center in the U.S. Broadly, the US has seen a 40% increase (from June 2024 to June 2025) of people in ICE detention, currently an average of 56,000 people per day, the highest in US history. The recent passage of the 2025 Reconciliation Bill, otherwise known as Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has expanded ICE’s budget to $150 billion of taxpayer dollars to carry out its mass detention and deportation plan. It is crucial to ensure that facilities where human rights are being violated are held accountable and detained individuals are released from detention to receive the medical care they need to survive.