[8.5.08 纽约时报] 外籍移民关押后死亡，细节不详

FEnzo

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/nyregion/05detain.html


Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the ElizabethDetention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee hadfallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him insolitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken himaway more dead than alive.  Skip to next paragraph     Enlarge This Image

Boubacar Bah, shown on a trip to Washington, died after being injured in a privately run immigration jail.

  Further Reading
Deaths in Detention

A page of resources on the topic of in-custody deaths, including pastcoverage of deaths in immigration custody in The Times and othernewspapers, links to information around the Web, an interactive map ofimmigration detention facilities, documents relating to this articleand more.

Go to the Times Topics Page »
RelatedFamily 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)
  Enlarge This Image

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, noofficial notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. Whenfrantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb.5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fractureand multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later withoutever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to findout why.
Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list ofdeaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 toNovember 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.
Thelist, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congressdemanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under theFreedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deathsin immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jailsand privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growingform of incarceration.
The list has few details, and they areoften unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previouslyunreported cases like Mr. Bah’s. And it reflects a reality that hauntsgrieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information aboutthe fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.
Mr.Bah’s relatives never saw the internal records labeled “proprietaryinformation — not for distribution” by the Corrections Corporation ofAmerica, which runs the New Jersey detention center for the federalgovernment. The documents detail how he was treated by guards andgovernment employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medicalunit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell formore than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsiveand intermittently foaming at the mouth.
Mr. Bah had lived in NewYork for a decade, surrounded by a large circle of friends andrelatives. The extravagant gowns he sewed to support his wife andchildren in West Africa were on display in a Manhattan boutique.
Buthe died in a sequestered system where questions about what had happenedto him, or even his whereabouts, were met with silence.
As thecountry debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands ofpeople who are not American citizens are being locked up for days,months or years while the government decides whether to deport them.Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have pastcriminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.
Deathis a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is aperennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system,immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answerswhen things go wrong.
No government body is required to keeptrack of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry ismandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment ofthose who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities,lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.
Federal officialssay deaths are reviewed internally by Immigration and CustomsEnforcement, which reports them to its inspector general and decideswhich ones warrant investigation. Officials say they notify thedetainee’s next of kin or consulate, and report the deaths to localmedical authorities, who may conduct autopsies. In Mr. Bah’s case, areview before his death found no evidence of foul play, an immigrationspokesman said, though after later inquiries from The Times, he said afull review of the death was under way.
But critics, includingmany in Congress, say this piecemeal process leaves too much to theagency’s discretion, allowing some deaths to be swept under the rugwhile potential witnesses are transferred or deported. They say it alsoobscures underlying complaints about medical care, abusive conditionsor inadequate suicide prevention.

連長

这篇文章被删掉了，不过这似乎是08.5.5