How many women have experienced similar mistreatment, but because they are poor and came from a remote village in Mexico- their chance of getting asylum is nil. How many babies have been lost during deportation proceedings?
At the least, it proves to the rest of the world that ICE does abuse its detainees.
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Once Facing Deportation, a Woman Gets Asylum
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: September 8, 2007
New York Times
It was a case that galvanized protests in Chinese-American communities around the United States last year and drew international attention: the pregnant Chinese woman who miscarried twins soon after she was taken by federal immigration officers from Philadelphia to New York to be deported.
This week the woman, Zhenxing Jiang, 33, was granted political asylum by an immigration judge in New York after the government unexpectedly dropped its longstanding opposition to her request.
The decision, made without elaboration on Tuesday by the immigration judge, Barbara Nelson, means that Ms. Jiang and her husband will be allowed to stay in the United States with their children, sons 8 and 5 and a newborn boy, all United States citizens.
“I am very happy,” said Ms. Jiang, who ran a restaurant in South Philadelphia for a decade with her husband, Tian-Xiao Zhang, 36, whose own asylum case is still pending.
They had entered the country illegally in the mid-’90s and each applied for political asylum, with Ms. Jiang eventually contending that under China’s one-child policy, she could face forced abortion or sterilization if she were made to return with two American-born children.
...But last September, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that reconsideration was warranted “under the particular circumstances of this case, including the current investigation into the treatment of the applicant” while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, “and the humanitarian concerns present.”
Ms. Jiang and her lawyers contend she suffered physical and mental abuse by immigration officers when they took her to Kennedy International Airport from the Philadelphia immigration office, where her husband and two sons were waiting in the lobby, unaware of what was happening.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials vigorously deny the lawyers’ account that Ms. Jiang was manhandled, denied food for eight hours and ridiculed when she first pleaded for medical care.
It is not disputed that shortly before her flight, an ambulance took her to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where doctors found that the two fetuses she was carrying had died.
...The government’s about-face, Mr. Cox added, “was tantamount to acknowledging that she was mistreated.”
...Charles Miller, speaking for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which is part of the Justice Department, said agency policy was not to comment on immigration court decisions “because the decision speaks for itself.”
For complete article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/nyregion/08deport.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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