[What a "human right" country of the US of A!]--Chinese Woman Miscarries During Deportation
News Digest, By Cao Jian, translated by Eugenia Chien,
World Journal, Feb 11, 2006
NEW YORK – A Chinese woman pregnant with twins suffered a miscarriage after federal agents tried to forcibly deport her at John F. Kennedy Airport, reports the Chinese-language World Journal.
Jiang Zhen-Xing, who was three-months pregnant, and her husband Zhang Tian-Xia were at a 9 a.m. appointment on Feb. 7 with an immigration official in Philadelphia, where the couple had lived illegally for 11 years.
While her husband was waiting outside the office, Jiang was told that she would be deported.
Two uniformed immigration officers hustled Jiang to the back of the building and forced her into a van.
Jiang complained of pain in her abdomen en route to the airport, but immigration officers ignored her request for medical attention. She had not eaten all day.
When Jiang arrived at the John F. Kennedy airport in New York at 1 p.m., she asked immigration officers to call an ambulance but was again denied. The officers told her there was nothing wrong with her and that they were going to deport her.
Jiang said she told immigration officials she was pregnant and wanted to have the babies here. After the babies are born, she told them, she would leave the United States voluntarily. Immigration officials told her that they knew she was pregnant and that was the reason she is being deported. (Children born here everntually can become U.S. citizens.)
Jiang was not taken to the Jamaica Hospital in Queens until hours later. When she arrived at the hospital, both fetuses had lost their heartbeats.
Zhang, who had been waiting for his wife at the Philadelphia immigration office all day, received a phone call from her at 4 p.m.. She told him that she had already been taken to the airport.
“She was telling me that her stomach was hurting very much,” Zhang said.
Zhang protested with immigration officials. At 1 a.m. on Feb. 8, immigration officers told Zhang that his wife was still in the United States and that she was in the hospital in New York.
“I drove three hours to the hospital, only to find out that we lost both babies,” he said. Zhang said the two immigration officers who took his wife to New York left for Philadelphia as soon as he arrived at the hospital.
After immigration officers took Jiang to the hospital, ultrasound verified that both babies had died. Doctors operated on Jiang on Feb. 8 to remove the fetuses.
“How can they be so cruel? Two lives were lost just like this,” Zhang said.
Jiang came here illegally from Fuzhou, China about 11 years ago and met her husband in the United States. The couple was married about eight years ago and opened a take-out Chinese restaurant in northern Philadelphia. They have two sons, ages 7 and 9.
Jiang applied for political asylum a few years ago, but her request was rejected. Because her two sons were born in America, Jiang was allowed to stay in the United States but was required to report to immigration officials regularly.
Hospital spokespersons said Jiang’s operation went smoothly and that she would be discharged on Feb. 9.
This incident shocked the Chinese community here. Queens City Councilman John Liu visited Jiang in the hospital on the evening of Feb. 8. Liu said that he needs to look into immigration procedures and then discuss how to help the Zhangs. Liu told the New York Post that Jiang’s treatment was “atrocious.”
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