Disturbing article in today's NYT

[Kathryn41 3,205]

A very disturbing article on death of immigrants held in detention centers - especially the primary case mentioned - Mr. Bah, a green card holder who was taken into detention when he returned after a visit abroad to family:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/nyregion...p;th&emc=th

Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody

By NINA BERNSTEIN Published: May 5, 2008 Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

A Family Abroad Boubacar Bah with his first wife, Dalanda, and their elder son, Amadou Talibé Bah, in Guinea before Mr. Bah came to the United States in 1998. But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Mr. Bah's name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

The list, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation's fastest-growing form of incarceration.

The list has few details, and they are often unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previously unreported cases like Mr. Bah's. And it reflects a reality that haunts grieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.

(click on link above for rest of article -this is just the introduction)

Go to the Times Topics Page »

Family Struggled in Vain to Help Suffering Detainee (May 5, 2008)

A Government Statement on Detainee Deaths (May 5, 2008)

Immigration Agency's List of Deaths in Custody (May 5, 2008)

Edited May 5, 2008 by Kathryn41

[Chica Yeyé 41]

Does not surprise me; but sadly enough I doubt anything would be done about it in the scope of a serious inquiry. Sad, indeed.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Shameful perversion of what this country is all about.

[Heracles 417]

Shameful perversion of what this country is all about.

Don't worry. Obama will fix everything. He is the man..

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Shameful perversion of what this country is all about.

Don't worry. Obama will fix everything. He is the man..

Well there's always the brown parachute of McCain to McFuck it up a bit worse with a continuation of a$$hole Bush policies.

[Sheriff Uling 3]

If this kinda thing happened to a few illegal aliens, just maybe some would think twice about coming here and just maybe some would actually leave. I guess that's wishful thinking...

[Ban Hammer 13,344]

If this kinda thing happened to a few illegal aliens, just maybe some would think twice about coming here and just maybe some would actually leave. I guess that's wishful thinking...

quit reading my mind!

[GaryC 7]

Mr. Bah's name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

I don't want anyone to die needlessly like this, but you do realize that 66 deaths in 3 years is very few compared to a regular jail or prison per inmate? If you found out the deaths rate per 1000 prisoners in the immigration lock up and compared it to any major prison and I think you will find that they have a pretty good track record. This is nothing but another attempt to deflect us from enforcing the law and ridding ourselves of law breaking illegals.

[peejay 327]

It's sad to hear about any needless accidental death. Unfortunately these stories tend to be used to propogandize that illegal aliens shouldn't be locked up at all and our laws need not be enforced. Of course detainees should be treated humanely while being deported, but they must be detained and deported when they break our immigration and labor laws. That's the bottom line.

As GaryC stated...incidents of prisoners dying in jail are not uncommon. People dying out on the streets is not uncommon either.

[rebeccajo 14]

I don't think this guy took a nosedive as a stand for illegal immigration.

[Caladan 19]

This is worse than prison in many ways, the biggest one being (if you read the articles) that they aren't very good at notifying family, including in one case where the woman only found out at his hearing that her husband had been an unclaimed body in the morgue. Deaths in custody will happen, but when they happen because of neglect and abuse, that's wrong.

Besides, 'not as bad as the prison system' is hardly ringing praise, especially given that immigration violations like having one's green card be rejected while one was overseas are not crimes.