1. TX GOP consults with AG
2. More charges stem from raid
3. Hospital 'deports' immigrant
4. Detention contractor sued
5. Son of illegal wins gold

1.
GOP lawmakers question Texas AG on immigration issues
By Karen Brooks
The Dallas Morning News, August 20, 2008

Austin -- Texas Republican lawmakers want an attorney general's opinion on how far the state can go in dealing with illegal immigration, providing an early snapshot of the looming fight in the Texas Legislature next year.

On Tuesday, Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, and Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott if the state could legally yank the business licenses of employers who hire illegal workers, hinting that such strong sanctions – already enacted in Arizona – could find support in the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature.

They also asked if they're allowed to ban cities from enacting "sanctuary" ordinances that prohibit city workers, including police, from enforcing immigration laws – as Fort Worth and Austin have done.

"I really believe that the citizenry are asking for something to be done," said Mr. Corte, chairman of the House GOP.

The two questions are a warning shot to immigration advocates and the business community about where some of the hot spots of the debate will be.

Several cities already encourage their police not to focus on immigration status of witnesses and victims, and some legislators want to ban such practices.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/...

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2.
More charges filed in Iowa plant immigration raid
By Henry C. Jackson
The Associated Press, August 19, 2008

Des Moines (AP) -- A supervisor arrested after a large immigration raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant was hit with new charges Tuesday including conspiring to hire illegal immigrants.

Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza is expected to plead guilty to that charge, as well as aiding and abetting the hiring of illegal immigrants, according to a court filing by the U.S. attorney.

U.S. Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth wrote in a filing that Guerrero-Espinoza is expected to waive his indictment and enter into a plea agreement.

Guerrero-Espinoza was charged last month, along with Martin De La Rosa-Loera, with encouraging illegal immigrants to reside in the U.S. and aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identification. Guerrero-Espinoza also was charged with aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft.

The U.S. attorney's office would not comment Tuesday on the status of those charges. Messages left with lawyers for Guerrero-Espinoza and De La Rosa-Loera were not immediately returned.
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jO9WZoMijd4RZonKDKU4OabjtjkgD92LLKQG0

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3.
Undocumented immigrant in coma set to be returned to Mexico
Triage blog: Sending sick undocumented immigrants back home
By Judith Graham and Deanese Williams-Harris
The Chicago Tribune, August 20, 2008

A 30-year-old Mexican man in a coma at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago has ignited a dispute over a little-known practice at hospitals—sending medically needy undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin.

The disagreement revolves around Francisco Pantaleon, who arrived in the U.S. 11 years ago and suffered a severe brain hemorrhage in mid-July, according to his sister Socorro. A father of two, Pantaleon worked at a carwash and has no health insurance, she said.

The medical center believes there is "little hope for recovery," according to a statement released Tuesday, and officials arranged for Pantaleon to be transferred to a hospital in Acapulco at UIC's expense. An official said his immediate family consented to the move.

But Pantaleon's sister and cousin are protesting that arrangement and have retained lawyers in hopes of preventing it. "This is an injustice," said his sister, who worries that Pantaleon won't survive the trip or find adequate care in Mexico.

The dispute touches on two hot-button issues, Immigration and health care. With the exception of pregnant women some children and people in medical emergencies, illegal immigrants generally have no right to health care in the U.S. But access to long-term care—the kind of services Pantaleon appears to need—is not guaranteed even if the patients are U.S. citizens, with the exception of the very poor.

Legally, hospitals are bound to stabilize all patients in an emergency, regardless of their nationality or insurance status. Afterward they are required to arrange to transfer patients to settings where they can receive adequate care, said Doreena Wong, staff attorney for the National Health Law Program. The difficulty is, nursing homes in Chicago usually will not serve undocumented immigrants who don't have health insurance or any means to pay for care.

"We can't arrange long-term care here, so we try to do the best we can in the country of origin," said Dr. William Chamberlin, chief medical officer at UIC Medical Center.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-patient-depo...

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4.
Cellmate Describes Pain of Detainee Who Died
By Nina Bernstein
The New York Times, August 20, 2008

A lawsuit filed in federal court a year ago by a Dominican detainee makes complaints about health care at a detention center in Rhode Island that are similar to accounts of how the center treated a Chinese New Yorker who died Aug. 6 in immigration custody. That inmate was suffering from a fractured spine and extensive cancer that had gone undiagnosed until five days before his death.

The lawsuit, filed in Providence, asserts that employees at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center, in Central Falls, R.I., denied a wheelchair to Marino De Los Santos, who said that he suffered serious injuries to his neck, back, chest and spine in two falls at the center in 2006. According to the suit, employees accused Mr. De Los Santos of faking his injuries and refused to take him to scheduled examinations by a spine specialist.

Cornell Corrections of Rhode Island, one of the defendants, which ran the center at the time covered by the suit, denied any wrongdoing in its answer.

In the case of Hiu Lui Ng, who was the subject of an article last week in The New York Times, lawyers and relatives said that when he was racked with pain and too weak to walk, detention officials refused him a wheelchair, failed to take him to scheduled appointments for an M.R.I. exam or a CT scan, and instead took him in shackles to Hartford — where he was pressured to withdraw his appeals and accept deportation.

The lawsuit by Mr. De Los Santos and details of earlier medical evaluations that fell short of diagnosing Mr. Ng’s terminal illness and debilitating injury, emerged this week as members of Congress demanded a full accounting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. De Los Santos, 37, said that Mr. Ng was briefly his cellmate early last month and that his extreme back pain and weakness were apparent.

“He was crying all night,” Mr. De Los Santos said from his home in Bridgeport, Conn., where he returned after he was released on bond on Friday. He faces deportation as a convicted drug dealer. “I got bottom bunk, he got the upper bunk, and when he’s going to bed, it’s terrible. And I got problems, too, in my back, but him, when I see him, I can’t sleep.”

Mr. Ng was eventually assigned to a lower bunk in another cell, but by late last month he could barely walk, Mr. De Los Santos said. “When you line up to take medicine, he would grab a chair, because he couldn’t stand. And they would tell him he had to let the chair go, he had to stand, but he couldn’t.”

He said that when Mr. Ng was bedridden, he saw a nurse go to check him in his cell. “She came out laughing and saying he was faking,” Mr. De Los Santos said.

Mr. Ng, a computer engineer with no criminal record, overstayed a visa years ago and had been applying for a green card through his wife, a United States citizen, when he was swept into the detention system in July 2007.

Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an e-mail message that the agency “continues to investigate allegations that Mr. Ng was mistreated in any way while in detention.”

But she added: “Based on a review of the medical records, it appears that Mr. Ng was examined by medical staff at the facility where he was detained and at the local hospital in Rhode Island both as a normal course of admission to the facility and for individual complaints he had. Tragically, but not unlike similar situations involving citizens of this country, Mr. Ng was diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer and sadly succumbed to the illness within days of the diagnosis.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/nyregion/20detain.html

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5.
U.S. Wrestler Completes a Journey From Poverty
By Greg Bishop
The New York Times, August 19, 2008

Beijing -- The American flag landed on the scorer’s table, launched by a family member with exceptional aim. Henry Cejudo grabbed it from his coach and draped it around his body. He stood there for the longest time, fighting back tears, the son of illegal immigrants wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.

After Cejudo had defeated Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan to win the 121-pound freestyle wrestling final on Tuesday, and after his family members had celebrated so loudly for so long that security threatened to kick them out, officials hung a gold medal around his neck. He said he might never remove it.

“I might just sleep with this,” Cejudo said. “It changed my life already.”

Fitting, because his is a story about change — for himself, for his family and maybe now for the USA Wrestling program, which trained the 21-year-old Cejudo to become the youngest gold medalist in United States wrestling history.

The gold medal, and his path to it, changed so many lives along the way.

Like his mother’s life. Nelly Rico, who came to the United States from Mexico as an illegal immigrant, raised seven children by herself and left Los Angeles with them in the middle of the night to escape the career criminal who was the father Cejudo never really knew.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/sports/olympics/20cejudo.html