Thread: NY Times-IA Detainee Dies in Detention

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands
By NINA BERNSTEIN
He was 17 when he came to New York from 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 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 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 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.

Full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/ny...gewanted=print

It sounds like he had a very fast moving cancer, if it killed him 4 months after he complained about pain. Instead of blaming and suing, his family should just accept that this person chose to ignore his health problems, which most likely began before his detention did, and even if he had been given agressive medical treatment, would he have been cured? It sounds like it was too late to do anything about. When was the last time he had a complete physical? Did he show any concern for his family by taking care of himself and getting checked by a doctor on a regular basis? Somehow, I doubt it. But of course, it's the taxpayers responsibility to show more interest in his physical well being than he showed for himself. Did his wife ever insist he go to the doctor once a year, like other grown men who care about themselves do, in order to keep himself healthy, catch any problems before they become major, or, I don't know, set a good example for his anchor babies?

ACLU to represent family of immigrant

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 30, 2008

By Karen Lee Ziner

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is providing legal representation to the family of Hiu Lui Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese national who died last month while in immigration custody at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls.

Ng, a computer engineer from New York, died from complications of cancer, according to the Office of State Medical Examiners. Ng’s lawyers said he also had a fractured spine, and was denied medical care both at the Wyatt facility and a Vermont jail where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for bed space.

John J. McConnell Jr., a cooperating attorney with the Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union, is “gathering information about Ng’s death and investigating any potential legal claims,â€