VivirLatino

Another Hard Working Immigrant Detained, Tortured, Killed

12:00 H | Topics: Health - Immigration - New York City

As more and more ICE raids occur across the country, their is a growing concern with what is happening with people after they are detained and locked up especially with more and more prisoners of ICE ending up dead.

The latest case to come to light is that of Hui Liu Ng. By all accounts was trying fulfill the "American dream". He had a job in the Empire State Building, had a home in Queens, had a wife who was a U.S. citizen and two children born and raised here. Why was he detained? He had a work permit and a pending asylum application that was denied. He also had a separate green card application. A 2001 appointment to appear in Immigration court was sent to a non-existent address and that led to an arrest at a green card interview appointment in 2007. The second phase of a nightmare was about to begin.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.

“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards. [...]

Officials have given no explanation why they took Mr. Ng to Hartford and back on the same day. But the lawyers say the grueling July 30 trip appeared to be an effort to prove that Mr. Ng was faking illness, and possibly to thwart the habeas corpus petition they had filed in Rhode Island the day before, seeking his release for medical treatment.

The federal judge who heard that petition on July 31 did not make a ruling, but in an unusual move insisted that Mr. Ng get the care he needed. On Aug. 1, Mr. Ng was taken to a hospital, where doctors found he had terminal cancer and a fractured spine. He died five days later.

This is what needs to be denounced by the presidential candidates. It is not acceptable to put enforcement on the top of the immigration agenda while ignoring the waves of inexcusable lack of care happening in jails that is leading to people being effectively killed. When you deny someone needed medical care, that is killing them.

In the meantime,

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was prompted to introduce the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008: A bill to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish procedures for the timely and effective delivery of medical and mental health care to all immigration detainees in custody, and for other purposes.

How many more lives will be lost in the meantime?

Via / Zuky, New York Times, Culture Kitchen

Related

• Constitutional Protections Not Applied to Ana Romero: Mujer, Madre, Trabajadora, Muerta (Wednesday, Sep 17 2008)
• 9-11 ICE Arrests in San Francisco Highlight Disregard for Nuestros Niños y Familias (Monday, Sep 15 2008)