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Detention In America Should Not be a Death Sentence
By Matthew Rothschild
18/08/08 "The
Progressive" -- -- At any given time,
there are about 30,000 immigrants in detention in the United
States.
And the way they are treated is
a scandal.
Sometimes, they can’t even get
medical care for life-threatening conditions.
The great Haitian-American
writer, Edwidge Danticat, has written a prize-winning book,
“Brother, I’m Dying” about her uncle who perished in detention
out of neglect.
She also testified about his treatment on October 4 before a
House Judiciary subcommittee.
Immigration officials had taken
away his medication for high blood pressure and an inflamed
prostate. And even when he was vomiting they accused him of
faking.
In the next issue of The
Progressive,
Laurel Maury tells about a man named Francisco Castaņeda,
who was placed in an immigration facility in early 2006. He had
a lesion on his penis, but the immigration service would never
let him get a biopsy for it.
When he was released almost a
year later, he found out he had invasive skin cancer. He had to
have his penis amputated, and he died within the year.
“It’s too late for me,” he
testified to Congress four months before he died, at the same
hearing as Danticat. But “I am not the only one who didn’t get
the medical care I needed. It was routine to wait weeks or
months for even basic care.”
On Wednesday,
the New York Times reported another case of a man, named Hiu
Lui Ng, who died in detention with a broken back and a body
riddled with untreated cancer.
“Officials accused him of faking
his condition,” the Times reported. “They denied him a
wheelchair.” And according to affidavits filed by his family,
“they carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and
legs.”
Only five days before his death
did immigration officials take him to a hospital, and only after
being ordered to by a judge. There he got the terminal
diagnosis.
This is outrageous.
Even if you’re as anti-immigrant
as Lou Dobbs, I sure hope you’ll agree that detention shouldn’t
amount to a death sentence.
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of
The
Progressive magazine.
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