ICE Tortures And Kills A New York Homeowner

Hui Liu Ng was a computer professional from Hong Kong working in the Empire State Building and a married father of two US-born sons. Then ICE had its way with him. He was detained last year and swept into the nightmarish and sadistic prison/deportation system. He died last week in ICE custody with a broken back and untreated cancer. From the New York Times (thanks, Yave):

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.

[ Read it all ]

UPDATE: More from blogmiga Liza at Culture Kitchen:

Homeland Security's ICE has become notorious for its violent disregard of Human and Civil Rights for non-resident immigrants. It is due to their cynical treatment of immigration as a felony and crime the 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.

I hope it passes.

Comments

[Donna]

This makes me so sick to my stomach just imagining the pain this poor man must have had to endure for the past year and knowing there was no one to hear him and help him, or rather they heard but they didn't care to help him. I can't understand how anyone can be so cruel to watch someone suffer and do nothing, not even call a doctor to examine him, but this isn't even the first time, this reminded me of Francisco Castaneda. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/22/BAEKV6N3D.DTL

[Kai]

Donna, yes it is a truly awful disturbing story, and you're right, the cruelty is unbelievable. Unfortunately there are many like it. Thanks for the Fransisco Castaneda link, and for dropping by.

[nezua]

dude. no fucking words for what a human being like this has to go through. i rage and bleed behind my eyes for just one hour's imagination. poor man dying of cancer with BROKENSPINE.

there is no justice today. we will fight for it. but today? nAGH. crime.

[Kai]

Nez, you said it bro. No words for this anguish. This criminality. Only thing to do is keep fighting back.

[FREE AZTLAN]

This latest murder is a brutal reminder of what American Freedom and Democracy (sic) truly stand for behind all the Hollywood-style propaganda and spin.