This is fairly typical of the attitude towards a person once they are incarcerated. No prison employee is going to go out of their way to look something up, or make a phone call. There is no oversight on prison employees (outside of doing the minimum to make sure they don't beat the prisoners too frequently or openly). Laziness is prevalent inside the justice system. No-one is in a hurry to do anything, especially if it is outside their job description.

There is an international treaty (Vienna Convention) that requires governments to inform arrestees of their right to speak to their embassy. The problem is that treaty violations aren't really enforceable without an underlying local statute to implement them.

It was only recently that Illinois made it a statutory requirement to implement the treaty by adding "(b-5) This subsection is intended to implement and be interpreted consistently with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the United States is a party." to their arrest law:

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=0...