[Ppnews] Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

[Political Prisoner News]

August 13, 2008
NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/nyregion/13detain.html?adxnnlx%1218625372-Po7oWmR1WLKHDUoggXnx7w=&_r=3&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1218726024-wX1zh59bK3MWhTnWjmmV4Q


Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/nina_bernstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per>NINA 
BERNSTEIN

He was 17 when he came to New York from 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/hongkong/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Hong 
Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, 
eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen 
years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a 
computer engineer with a job in the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/empire_state_building/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>Empire 
State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is 
a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years 
earlier, went to 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>immigration 
headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his 
final interview for a green card, he was swept 
into immigration detention and shuttled through 
jails and detention centers in three New England states.

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 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/immigration_and_customs_enforcement_us/index.html?inline=nyt-org>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 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/homeland_security_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org>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.

Immigration and detention officials would not 
discuss the case, saying the matter was under 
internal investigation. But in response to a 
relative of Mr. Ng’s who had begged that he be 
checked for a spinal injury or fractures, the 
Wyatt detention center’s director of nursing, Ben 
Candelaria, replied in a July 16 e-mail message 
that Mr. Ng was receiving appropriate care for 
“chronic back pain.” He added, “We treat each and 
every detainee in our custody with the same high 
level of quality, professional care possible.”

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 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/habeas_corpus/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>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.

The accounts of Mr. Ng’s treatment echo other 
cases that have prompted legislation, now before 
the House Judiciary Committee, to set mandatory 
standards for care in immigration detention.

In March, the federal government admitted medical 
negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, 
36, a Salvadoran whose cancer went undiagnosed in 
a California detention center as he was 
repeatedly denied a biopsy on a painful penile 
lesion. In May, The New York Times chronicled the 
death of Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor who 
suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages 
in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; 
records show he was left in an isolation cell 
without treatment for more than 13 hours.

When Mr. Ng died last week, he had spent half his 
life in the United States, his sister, Wendy 
Zhao, said in a tearful interview.

Born in China, he entered the United States 
legally on a tourist visa. Mr. Ng stayed on after 
it expired and applied for political asylum. He 
was granted a work permit while his application 
was pending, and though asylum was eventually 
denied, immigration authorities did not seek his deportation for many years.

Meanwhile, his sister said, Mr. Ng (pronounced 
Eng), who was known as Jason, graduated from high 
school in Long Island City, Queens, worked his 
way through community technical college, passed 
Microsoft training courses and won a contract to 
provide computer services to a company with 
offices in the Empire State Building.

In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in 
immigration court was mistakenly sent to a 
nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng 
did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered 
him deported. By then, however, he was getting 
married, and on a separate track, his wife 
petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services 
for a green card for him ­ a process that took 
more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, 
the couple showed up for his green card interview 
on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents 
waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order.

Over the next year, while his family struggled to 
pay for new lawyers to wage a complicated and 
expensive legal battle, Mr. Ng was held in jails 
under contract to the federal immigration 
authorities: Wyatt; the House of Correction in 
Greenfield, Mass.; and the Franklin County Jail in St. Albans, Vt.

Mr. Ng seemed healthy until April, his sister 
said, when he began to complain of severe back 
pain and skin so itchy he could not sleep. He was 
then in the Vermont jail, a 20-bed detention 
center with no medical staff run by the county 
sheriff’s office. Seeking care, he asked to be 
transferred back to Wyatt, a 700-bed center with 
its own medical staff, owned and operated by a municipal corporation.

In a letter to his sister, Mr. Ng recounted 
arriving there on July 3, spending the first 
three days in pain in a dark isolation cell. 
Later he was assigned an upper bunk and required 
to climb up and down at least three times a day 
for head counts, causing terrible pain. His 
brother-in-law B. Zhao appealed for help in 
e-mail messages to the warden, Wayne Salisbury, on July 11 and 16.

“I was really heartbroken when I first saw him,” 
Mr. Zhao wrote Mr. Salisbury after a visit. 
“After almost two weeks of suffering with 
unbearable back pain and unable to get any sleep, 
he was so weak and looked horrible.”

The nursing director replied that Mr. Ng had been 
granted a bottom bunk and was receiving 
painkillers and muscle relaxants prescribed by a detention center doctor.

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once 
a robust man who stood nearly six feet and 
weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng 
looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in 
pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister 
recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely 
on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, 
bring him food and call his family; he no longer 
received painkillers, because he could not stand 
in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a 
lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the 
detainee, but had to leave without talking to 
him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk 
to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. 
Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a 
deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on 
a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he 
wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting 
Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” 
Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside 
doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Mr. Ng told his lawyer he was ready to give up, 
the affidavit said, “because he could no longer 
withstand the suffering inside the facility,” but 
Officer Smith insisted that Mr. Ng would first 
have to withdraw all his appeals.

The account of his treatment clearly disturbed 
the federal judge, William E. Smith of United 
States District Court in Providence, who 
instructed the government’s lawyer the next day 
to have the warden get Mr. Ng to the hospital for an M.R.I.

The results were grim: cancer in his liver, lungs 
and bones, and a fractured spine. “ ‘I don’t have 
much time to live,’ ” his sister said he told her 
in a call from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

She said the doctor warned that if the family 
came to visit, immigration authorities might 
transfer her brother. Three days passed before 
the warden approved a family visit, she said, 
after demanding their Social Security numbers. 
Late in the afternoon of Aug. 5, as Mr. Ng lay on 
a gurney, hours away from death and still under 
guard, she and his wife held up his sons, 3 and 1.

“Brother, don’t worry, don’t be afraid,” Ms. Zhao 
said, repeating her last words to him. “They are 
not going to send you back to the facility again. Brother, you are free now.”




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