USA Reality – Jason Ng’s death, August 6th, 2008

Reality, in everyday usage, means “the state of things as they actually exist”. Cancer-Stricken 34-Year-Old Chinese Computer Engineer Dies After Being Denied Care in Private US Immigration Prison August 6th, 2008, a thirty-four-year-old Chinese computer engineer, Hiu Lui Ng, who overstayed his visa, died in a Rhode Island immigration detention center. He had cancer in his liver, lung and bones, and a fractured spine. Despite repeated complaints of severe pain, Mr. Ng was refused independent medical evaluation by immigration officials. Before Mr. Ng died on August 6th, he told his sister that the nurses at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island had told him to “stop faking” his illness. We speak to immigration attorney Joshua Bardavid. We turn to the sprawling detention system within this country that some have likened to a gulag and a series of domestic Guantanamo Bays: the immigration prisons that over 300000 pass through each year. Before Jason Ng—his American name—died on August 6th, 2008 he told his sister the doctors at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island had told him to “stop faking” his illness. It is a private prison. It’s owned by a private corporation that only owns the Donald Wyatt facility. It had been owned by a major publicly traded corporation, Cornell Corrections, until June of 2007, and then it was transferred to this private corporation, the Donald Wyatt Detention Corporation, that owns the facility. Jason Ng’s story is the …