Legal Immigrant with spinal cancer told he was faking in DHS custody, is dead

[Kire]

Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children
Posted by Cory Doctorow, August 13, 2008 10:39 PM
boing-boing


A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk, taken on long, bumpy drives while official demanded that he drop his immigration appeals. The jailers who caused his death were private contractors with fat deals with the DHS to lock up immigration detainees.
As he lay dying, his family -- wife and two children, aged 1 and 3 -- were denied access to him while the warden considered their request to visit.

"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."

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.’ ”


More: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/13/man-whose-us-immigra.html

[atreides1]

1. I Guess the DHS is the new Gestapo

Allowing a man to die because of some idiot got his address wrong.

[OwnedByFerrets]

2. KO was incensed over this last nite...nt

[MountainLaurel]

3. His blood on their hands

I hope all those involved never sleep again without seeing Mr. Ng's emaciated face in front of their eyes.

[TaranAlvein]

6. Indeed!

This is just awful! And if this is how they treat legal aliens who have merely overstayed their Visas (and through no fault of their own, I might add!), I don't even want to imagine how they mistreat captured illegal aliens! To even deny him the right to see his family is horrible!

[Realityhack]

7. Well... I know it will never happen but... I hope they never sleep as free men again n/t

[Kire]

4. Nr, Ng's Death - New York Times Editorial

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x377178

[FLAprogressive]

5. Hope a big lawsuit comes the DHS's way....

Horrible.

[Summermoondancer]

8. I can only shake my head

when I read these stories. Someone will eventually come in and say well he overstayed his visa without a thought in the world to the fact that it is common for one document to expire while you are waiting for your appointment at DHS and that you cannot renew the document while you are awaiting for an adjustment of status...it is the rules you know...they have a horrid habit of lost paperwork, wrong addresses and so on. Why can we be surprised they let someone die in custody when ICE goes and busts in doors of wrong houses because they didn´t want to get updated addresses on undocumented immigrants. Some of those addresses they had in the NY raids were twenty years old and they told police no they didn´t need updated residence information...sheesh. I fought the INS then later the DHS for fifteen years. We waited an eternity for my husband´s process and received appointments that were canceled without telling us until we had driven the 300 miles to the appointment...finally he became a citizen...during all of that time we applied for my step daughter when she was 2 ...she was 14 when we finally got her visa for her to immigrate. They allow goons like Arpaio to run an immigration program and they are then shocked by the results. Why am I not surprised at all of this?