[migrawatch-public] Immigration Detention News Network - Nov. 10

Monday, November 10, 2008

Deportation & Detention News November 11

1. Chronicle-Telegram - Elyria, OH: Another vigil planned after Casa
Fiesta raid

2. Annapolis Capital - Annapolis, MD: Feds move to seize $4.7M from
painting business owner

3. The Associated Press: Former IRA militant fights deportation in S. Texas

4. New California Media - San Francisco, CA: 111 Arrested in Florida
Immigration Raid

5. New York Times: Deported in a Coma, Saved Back in U.S.

1. Chronicle-Telegram - Elyria, OH: Another vigil planned after Casa
Fiesta raid

http://www.chroniclet.com/2008/11/08/another-vigil-planned-after-casa-fiesta-raid_122/

Cindy Leise November 8,2008

OBERLIN — Oberlin College students and others who object to the arrests of
illegal immigrants at Casa Fiesta restaurant plan to hold a candlelight
vigil at 6:30 tonight on the southeast corner of Tappan Square, an
organizer said.

There will be several speakers, and the group will distribute fliers, said
Mark Fahringer, chairman of the Lorain County Catholic Action Commission
board.

Two Mexican nationals were arrested as they arrived for work Oct. 30 at
Casa Fiesta at 84 S. Main St., according to immigration officials.

Two employees of the Casa Fiesta in Fremont and one employee of Casa
Fiesta in Ashland also were taken into custody on Oct. 30, said Mike
Gilhooly, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The arrests follow the July 23 raids of arrests of the Oberlin Casa Fiesta
and Casa Fiesta restaurants in Ashland, Fremont, Norwalk, Oberlin, Oregon,
Sandusky, Vermilion and Youngstown.

Five employees of the Oberlin restaurant were taken into custody at that
time, along with 53 other workers at the other restaurants.

Fahringer said he thought Immigration and Customs was "targeting small
towns and little businesses as easy prey."

After the arrests in July, about 100 members of the Oberlin community held
a rally in support of the workers.

Among those who support the Mexican nationals are students who assist
Mexican migrant workers with their English skills in the Immigrant Worker
Project, Fahringer said.

Also attending the earlier vigil were members of the Grassroots Rally Team
in Painesville, which protests illegal immigration and supports law
enforcement and immigration officials.

"We're a nation of laws, and people need to come here legally," said
Claudia Leonard, a member of the group from Lake County.

She said about 200 people are involved in the group, which formed after
members of the Hispanic community marched in Painesville with Mexican
flags.

"We just had enough and asked, 'Where's the rest of America?' " Leonard said.

2. Annapolis Capital - Annapolis, MD: Feds move to seize $4.7M from
painting business owner

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/11_09-67/TOP

Investigation continues into alleged hiring of illegal immigrants

SCOTT DAUGHERTY

November 09, 2008

Federal and county authorities want to seize more than $4.7 million in
cash, cars and homes belonging to the owner of Annapolis Painting
Services.

The seizure proceedings are on hold while federal agents investigate
whether Robert Bontempo Jr. harbored and employed illegal immigrants in
violation of federal law, according to documents filed in U.S. District
Court in Baltimore.

Marcia Murphy, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said Friday that
Mr. Bontempo's bank accounts remain frozen and liens remain filed against
his homes while the forfeiture hearings are pending. That way, she said,
he can not sell or give them away.

No charges have been filed against Mr. Bontempo - more than four months
after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided his business and
numerous homes in and around Annapolis on June 30 while investigating
several of his employees. The agents arrested 46 people during the raids,
saying all of them were in the country illegally.

Mr. Bontempo did not return calls for comment Friday about the possible
seizure of his $1.28 million Bay Ridge home on Bancroft Avenue and 14
others he owns in Anne Arundel County.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein began the
seizure proceeding the day of the raids, but asked to suspend the
forfeiture hearings July 18 pending the criminal investigation. A judge
placed the seizures on hold the following week.

If the federal government succeeds in seizing the property, Anne Arundel
County hopes to profit.

According to county police documents, Lt. Eric Hodge filed paperwork on
behalf of the department Aug. 11 seeking some of the proceeds should the
federal government actually seize the 15 county homes, a 2004 Porshe
Cayenne, a 2002 Mercedes Benz, eight GMC vans and $31,316.37 in cash.

"By filing these particular forms Anne Arundel County is preserving its
interest to a portion of any assets forfeited," said County Attorney
Jonathan Hodgson, explaining the paperwork.

Ms. Murphy said the county and state law enforcement officials will
receive 80 percent of the seizures - after mortgages, liens and car loans
are paid off. That money may be used to purchase equipment, she said.

The county released its seizure paperwork Oct. 29 in response to a Public
Information Act request originally submitted by CASA de Maryland. The
Capital received a duplicate packet Oct. 31.

The homes, only a few of which were raided by federal agents, are located
in the city, in Bay Ridge, on the Broadneck Peninsula and in
Davidsonville.

According to state property records, the properties are assessed between
$111,000 and $1.28 million.

Many of the homes are occupied. The Bontempos continue to live on Bancroft
Avenue and new tenants live in some of the homes on Arbor Hill Road,
Rosecrest Drive and Carrs Road.

Those residents who spoke to The Capital on Friday said they moved into
the homes after the immigration raids. They were not aware of the federal
government's plans to seize their homes.

County Executive John R. Leopold announced shortly after the early morning
raids on the offices of Annapolis Painting Services and 15 county homes
that about 50 county police officers assisted 75 federal agents in
rounding up the suspected undocumented workers.

"This will send a very strong signal that this administration, with the
cooperation of ICE, will not tolerate the hiring of illegal immigrants in
this county," he said June 30 while standing across the street from the
painting company's building.

According to a county breakdown of the raids - officially called Operation
"Touch Up" - 36 county officers helped serve warrants.

And those officers who participated in the raids played only a supporting
role. Lt. Hodge indicated in the seizure paperwork the county did not
supply "any unique or indispensable assistance."

The breakdown said uniformed officers were posted outside each house while
plainclothes detectives were on hand to seize contraband discovered in the
houses.

Col. James Teare Sr., chief of county police, said at the time officers
were pulled from other details in all areas of the department to help with
raids.

According to county documents, the department devoted 450 man hours to the
operation. One detective worked 29 hours of overtime in preparation for
the raids at an hourly rate of $45.09 and a total cost of $1,307.58. The
county, however, sought to have the federal government reimburse it for
that overtime.

CASA de Maryland, a Silver Spring-based advocacy group, is investigating
what role county police played in the raids after hearing numerous claims
of racial profiling and illegal home invasions. The group also wants to
know how much the raids cost Maryland taxpayers.

CASA filed a lawsuit Oct. 29 against the county seeking documents
regarding the county's involvement in the raids. The county says it
fulfilled the public information request that day, but the lawsuit is
pending.

The lawsuit mentions "widespread allegations" that officers entered homes
without warrants, interrogating individuals without reasonable suspicion
they were in the country illegally, engaged in racial profiling and
"needlessly and maliciously" destroyed property.

Scot R. Rittenberg, an assistant special agent for ICE, said in June the
tactics were justified.

"We never know what's behind that door," he said. "Often (in immigrant
raids) we've opened the door and found guns pointed at us. We never know
if it's MS-13 gang members or just illegal immigrants."

A group of former employees filed a federal class-action lawsuit against
Mr. Bontempo and Annapolis Painting Services in October alleging the
company violated federal and state wage laws by not paying overtime.

The workers also allege the company made illegal deductions from employee
paychecks, forcing them to pay for tools and materials.

That lawsuit also is pending.

Justin Cox, a civil rights specialist with CASA, said of the 46 people
arrested during the raids, most are out on bond awaiting hearings. He said
some agreed to leave the country without a fight and four remain in
federal custody in Texas.

Immigration continues to rise in Anne Arundel County and across the
nation. Census figures show Anne Arundel's foreign-born population grew 32
percent from 23,211 in 2000 to 30,748 in 2006.

Local economic development officials have said there are perhaps about
175,000 workers in Maryland illegally, representing about 6 percent of the
workforce.

3. The Associated Press: Former IRA militant fights deportation in S. Texas

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQCZ1qkFyZWoqP9ZvQpAbztkt_-wD94C93HO0

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN Nov 10 2008

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (AP) — A former IRA militant and escaped political
prisoner who has lived in immigration limbo for 25 years in California may
see it all unravel from inside a South Texas federal detention center.

Pol Brennan, convicted member of the Irish Republican Army and escapee
from a notorious prison outside Belfast, was nabbed with an expired work
permit in South Texas in January. He has been detained ever since,
awaiting a hearing Wednesday and Thursday on whether he'll finally earn
legal residency or be deported to Northern Ireland, where his wife says
he'll face retaliation.

Brennan's situation is so muddied that questions of why he would be
deported now after 25 years are balanced by the marvel that he was not
sent home years ago for sneaking into the country under an assumed name.
He had brushes with the law in the U.S. before his arrest in Texas, but
was able to renew work permits without becoming a permanent legal
resident.

Since coming to America, Brennan married and worked as a master carpenter,
bought a gun under an assumed name, once applied for a passport, also with
an assumed name, and was convicted of misdemeanor assault for scuffling
with a contractor who he claimed owed him money.

Immigration officials won't comment on his case, citing the upcoming
hearing. But Brennan's case has drawn attention, especially within the
Irish-American community. Supporters have run a petition drive, raised
money for his defense and recruited a bipartisan trio of congressmen who
wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this summer
supporting Brennan's request for bond.

Brennan, 55, a short man with wire glasses, gray goatee and love of
political theory, wears a professorial air.

His Web site offers writings and radio interviews in which he rails
against the bad food, guards, restrictions on reading material and what he
sees as racist immigration policies.

Brennan was caught with an expired work permit in January while he and his
wife, Joanna Volz, were driving to Austin from South Padre Island, where
they had visited Volz's mother.

U.S. Border Patrol agents at the Sarita checkpoint ran Brennan through the
computer and found: His conviction and 16-year prison sentence in 1977 in
Belfast for possession of explosives; the infamous 1983 escape from the
maximum security Maze Prison outside Belfast with 37 others; and his 1993
arrest by the FBI in Berkeley, Calif., after he had applied for a passport
using an assumed name.

"They started getting really agitated and excited," Brennan told The
Associated Press from the Willacy County Detention Center. "Like they were
on to something. It was kind of comical."

Two days later Border Patrol announced its agents had captured an
international fugitive. But Brennan had lived in the San Francisco Bay
Area since 1984, and his wife says he hadn't been hard to find.

"If I was an FBI agent (looking for Brennan and other Maze escapees) I
would just go to a big Irish bar and look for who never had to buy his
drinks," Volz said.

Brennan's 1993 arrest kicked off what became a 7-year fight against
extradition to Great Britain. It ended when Britain dropped its
extradition request, citing Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday accord,
which called for the accelerated release of the conflict's political
prisoners.

Ever since, Brennan and about 15 other former IRA prisoners, who made
their home in the United States, have lived in a legal limbo. Even though
they entered the country illegally, they can renew their work permits but
have not been able to get permanent immigration status. Brennan's requests
for political asylum and a green card are pending.

At his hearing this week, Brennan plans to argue that the extradition
would cause hardship for his wife — she quit her job to be near him in
Texas — and that he could face potentially violent grudges in Northern
Ireland.

4. New California Media - San Francisco, CA: 111 Arrested in Florida
Immigration Raid

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=023baa26afb181beaef5e956369f7eeb

Nov 09, 2008

MIAMI - Two days after immigrant rights groups in southern Florida sent a
letter asking president-elect Barack Obama to intervene and curb
immigration raids, ICE announced the arrest of 111 undocumented immigrants
in a new Florida raid, Univision reports. The five-day operation was
carried out in Miami, Broward, Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa and surrounding
areas. Those arrested in Florida are from Argentina, Brazil, China,
Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines,
Tunisia, Romania and Venezuela. Of the 111 arrested, 69 remain in ICE
custody of ICE and 42 were released on parole.

On Thursday, Florida activists called for a moratorium on raids until
Congress passes an immigration reform bill that includes a path to
legalization. The office of the president-elect responded, saying that
"our position is well-known" and that his commitment "to immigration
reform and all the important issues for Latinos in the U.S. still stands."

ICE teams will continue to seek out and detain "foreigners who have
ignored a judge's order to leave the country," said Michael Rozos,
director of ICE in Florida.

During fiscal year 2008 (Oct. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30, 2008) ICE deported
nearly 350,000 immigrants, the majority of them of Latin American origin.
The figure represents an 20 percent increase over the number deported in
fiscal year 2007.

5. New York Times: Deported in a Coma, Saved Back in U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/09deport.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

DEBORAH SONTAG

November 8, 2008

GILA BEND, Ariz. — Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old
farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a
Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.

Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal
immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of
this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded
the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres
on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali.

For days, Mr. Torres languished in a busy emergency room there, but his
parents, Jesús and Gloria Torres, were not about to give up on him.
Although many uninsured immigrants have been repatriated by American
hospitals, few have seen their journey take the U-turn that the Torreses
engineered for their son. They found a hospital in California willing to
treat him, loaded him into a donated ambulance and drove him back into the
United States as a potentially deadly infection raged through his system.

By summer's end, despite the grimmest of prognoses from the hospital in
Phoenix, Mr. Torres had not only survived but thrived. Newly discharged
from rehabilitation in California, he was haltingly walking, talking and,
hoisting his cane to his shoulder like a rifle, performing a silent,
comic, effortful imitation of a marching soldier.

"In Arizona, apparently, they see us as beasts of burden that can be
dumped back over the border when we have outlived our usefulness," the
elder Mr. Torres, who is 47, said in Spanish. "But we outwitted them. We
were not going to let our son die. And look at him now!"

Antonio Torres's experience sharply illustrates the haphazard way in which
the American health care system handles cases involving uninsured
immigrants who are gravely injured or seriously ill. Whether these
patients receive sustained care in this country or are privately deported
by a hospital depends on what emergency room they initially visit.

There is only limited federal financing for these fragile patients, and no
governmental oversight of what happens to them. Instead, it is left to
individual hospitals, many of whom see themselves as stranded at the
crossroads of a failed immigration policy and a failed health care system,
to cut through a thicket of financial, legal and ethical concerns.

That creates a burden. "It's a killer," said Brian Conway, spokesman for
the Greater New York Hospital Association. But it also establishes the
potential for neglectful and unethical if not illegal behavior by
hospitals.

"The opportunity to turn your back is there," said Dr. Stephen Larson, a
migrant health expert and physician at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania. "You're given an out by there not being formal regulations.
The question is whether or not litigation, or prosecution, catches up and
hospitals start to be held liable."

In October, the California Medical Association, responding to an article
in The New York Times about the medical deportation of a brain-injured
Guatemalan, passed a resolution opposing the forced repatriation of
patients. The American Medical Association is to take up the matter on
Sunday at a national meeting in Orlando.

"While we empathize with hospitals that must provide uncompensated care to
undocumented immigrants," said Dr. Robert Margolin, a trustee of the
California association, "we overwhelmingly oppose the practice of
repatriating patients without their consent."

An examination by The Times of cases across the country involving
seriously injured and ill immigrants shows patients at the mercy of
hospitals and hospitals at the mercy of a system that provides neither
compensation nor guidance. Taken together, the cases reveal a playbook of
improvised responses, from aggressive to compassionate.

In the case of Elliott Bustamante, a hospital in Tucson moved speedily,
and ultimately unsuccessfully, to transfer a sickly infant to Mexico,
ignoring the mother's opposition and the fact that Elliott was an American
citizen born with Down syndrome and a heart problem at that very hospital.

In the case of Kong Fong Yu, in contrast, a Manhattan hospital has
proceeded less decisively, keeping Mr. Yu, a stroke victim, as a boarder
for 18 months now as it grapples with whether to send him back to China or
to subsidize him in a nursing home indefinitely.

And in the case of Darwin Castro, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, an
Oklahoma City hospital forwent repatriation yet discharged Mr. Castro, a
brain-injured patient who needed 24-hour care, to a young relative who
also happened to be an illegal immigrant, living in the shadows and
ill-equipped to care for him.

The Dilemma

Hospitals consider these fragile patients to be a vexing challenge. Theirs
are protracted, expensive cases that force hospitals to make fateful
decisions or assume long-term responsibility for needy immigrants who are,
essentially, left at their doorsteps.

The two American hospitals treating Antonio Torres approached his case
from distinctly different perspectives. St. Joseph's in Phoenix, with a
focus on keeping down the rising cost of uncompensated care, repatriates
about eight uninsured patients a month.

"We're trying to be good stewards of the resources we have," said Sister
Margaret McBride, a hospital vice president. "We're trying to make sure
that the acute-care hospital is available for individuals who need acute
care. We can't keep someone forever."

By contrast, the other hospital, El Centro Regional Medical Center in
California, said it never sends an immigrant over the border. "We don't
export patients," said David R. Green, its chief executive. "I can
understand the frustrations of other hospitals, but the flip side is the
human being element."

Hospitals are required to screen and treat all those who arrive at their
emergency rooms. But they receive only partial compensation for illegal
immigrants, through emergency Medicaid and, for the last few years,
through Section 1011 of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, a program
that expired in October. That partial coverage ends when the patient is
stabilized.

But hospitals are also required to discharge safely patients who need
continuing care, leading to their quandary: they generally cannot find
nursing homes to accept illegal immigrants, or legal ones with less than
five years' residency, because long-term care is not covered by emergency
Medicaid.

Some states and localities provide their own long-term care coverage for
uninsured immigrants, and those exceptions demonstrate the demand. In
California, the Medi-Cal program spent about $20 million on about 460
patients last year. In New York City, illegal immigrants occupy about a
fifth of the 1,389 beds in the public nursing home on Roosevelt Island.

Hospitals have limited options in discharging immigrant patients who need
continuing care: keeping them indefinitely, with or without providing
rehabilitation; finding them charity beds or subsidizing them at nursing
homes; sending them home to relatives; or repatriating them.

"We have to be very, very creative," said Cara Pacione, director of social
work at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago.

Foreign consular officials say that areas with longstanding immigrant
populations tend to handle such patients more humanely — with the
exception of Arizona, where hostility toward illegal immigrants is high
and state financing for their care is low.

"We put an asterisk by Arizona," said a Mexican diplomat in Washington.

Hospitals need consulates' assistance in finding relatives and health care
options in patients' homelands as well as in obtaining travel documents.
The relationship is complicated and often contentious, as expressed
bluntly by Alan Kelly, vice president of Scottsdale Healthcare in Arizona.

"The Mexican consulate here is — how do I put it? — obstructionist," Mr.
Kelly said.

He described the situation with illegal immigrant patients as he sees it:
"Somebody falls out of a walnut tree. They show up in our Trauma One
center. We don't have any problem with treating or stabilizing them. It's
the humane thing to do. That's not where the costs run up. The costs run
up after they're moved out of the trauma unit into a regular bed. Nobody,
no nursing home, wants to take them. Then, it's like, 'Mexican government,
take responsibility for your own citizens!' But you play games with them.
They turn away. They basically say, 'No habla.' "

Mexican officials, unsurprisingly, see it differently. "We cooperate with
the families, not with the hospital," Jorge Solchaga, a Mexican consular
official in Phoenix, said. "Our principal objective is to help our
compatriots."

Still, Mr. Solchaga said that his office worked collaboratively with
hospitals and oversaw 80 medical repatriations from Phoenix to Mexico in
2007.

An Infant at Risk

Elliott Bustamante was born at University Medical Center in Tucson on
March 14, 2007, with Down syndrome and a heart defect. Two days later,
when he was in neonatal intensive care, the hospital made arrangements to
transfer him to a hospital in Mexico.

The fact that he was a United States citizen was immaterial, the
hospital's spokeswoman, Katie Riley, said. The hospital's policy is to
transfer patients to their "community of residence" for continuing care,
Ms. Riley said. And Elliott's parents, the hospital believed, were
residents of Mexico, as indicated by their Mexican driver's licenses.
Also, the hospital said, the mother initially told a social worker,
through an interpreter, that she was visiting Tucson when she went into
labor. Therefore, the hospital said, it was in the baby's interest, from a
continuity of care perspective, to move him to Mexico.

But Gricelda Mejía Medehuari, Elliott's mother, said that either the
hospital misunderstood her or that she failed to express herself
accurately.

Ms. Medehuari said that she had been living in Tucson for about a year
prior to Elliott's birth, and that her husband had been working
construction there for two years. The hospital also said that Ms.
Medehuari initially agreed to her baby's transfer, then "equivocated."

Ms. Medehuari said she was pressured: "We were so scared. They said we had
no rights, the baby neither. They said they would send the baby with or
without me. When Elliott was two weeks, they told me to gather my things
because the baby was leaving in 15 minutes with a lady. It was very ugly.
We contacted the Mexican consulate. They got us a lawyer."

The lawyer, Fernando Gaxiola, asked the hospital to delay sending the baby
across the border, and faxed a letter saying that he would be seeking
court protection to avert "the abduction of my client under the guise of
medical care." A hospital lawyer, he said, told him that it was too late,
that the baby was already heading to the airport.

Mr. Gaxiola summoned the police, who called the hospital, which ended up
switching gears and bringing the baby back to University Medical Center.

Nine days later, the hospital asked a judge to order Elliott's parents to
consent to his transfer to Mexico. His parents had made no arrangements to
pay $28,000 in hospital charges or to transfer their child, the hospital
said. Legally, the hospital argued, the baby could be considered to be
trespassing.

Eventually, after the Arizona Medicaid system approved Elliott for
coverage, University Medical Center was reimbursed for the baby's care and
dropped its effort to send him to Mexico. "The medical pretext for the
transfer disappeared once they found the money," Mr. Gaxiola said.

Ms. Riley, the University Medical Center spokeswoman, said Elliott's case
"is not representative of U.M.C.'s long history of successful medical
transfers of patients both to and from northern Mexico, but it does
underline the complex dilemmas that border hospitals face every day."

New Yorker in Limbo

Hospitals in New York City face equally complex dilemmas, with the added
dimension of a more diverse immigrant population and prospective
repatriations to Africa and Asia. The case of Kong Fong Yu has stymied a
community hospital in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Yu, 53, suffered a stroke on May 14, 2007. He awoke with slurred
speech and then collapsed on his bathroom floor. By the time he arrived at
New York Downtown Hospital, it was too late to try to reverse damage to
the brain, the hospital said in court papers.

The hospital admitted Mr. Yu for tests and to regulate his high blood
pressure, which he had been treating with Chinese herbs. Almost
immediately, Mr. Yu was considered medically stable and ready for
discharge to a skilled nursing home. But since he was uninsured and
ineligible for Medicaid, no nursing home would take him. He had no
relatives in the United States.

So he stayed, and stayed. And he was not the only one. Jeffrey Menkes, the
hospital's president, said Downtown housed a few uninsured immigrants like
Mr. Yu at any given moment, which costs the hospital $1.5 million to $2
million annually. It also costs patients like Mr. Yu the chance to receive
the intensive rehabilitation that they need.

Mr. Yu, according to a hospital document, can "perform some independent
activities of daily living, including turning in bed and feeding himself."
But he is "dependent on staff for other daily necessities" and suffers
from "limited cognition and limited independent judgment."

One day last summer, he lay in his fourth floor bed watching a soundless
"Clifford the Big Red Dog" cartoon with his roommate, a tiny, elderly
Chinese man who has been boarding at the hospital for years.

Mr. Yu said that he entered the United States legally 11 years ago and
then overstayed his visa to work "on the black market" as a cook. Speaking
in Mandarin that was translated by a hospital employee, Mr. Yu said he was
grateful to Downtown. "American hospitals are very humane," he said. "I
have no money. This hospital is giving me food, a bed and care."

But the hospital does not want him to stay indefinitely. Last winter, Mr.
Menkes said, at a moment when he had patients "stacked up in the emergency
room," he realized that he needed to find a way to discharge patients like
Mr. Yu. Shortly thereafter, the hospital went to court to get a guardian
appointed.

"He is utilizing valuable hospital resources," the hospital said, "when
the hospital is overburdened and cannot and is not equipped to provide
rehabilitation or long-term care."

When Katherine B. Huang, a Chinese-American lawyer, was appointed his
guardian last spring, the hospital planned to transfer Mr. Yu to a
Brooklyn nursing home and support his stay. Ms. Huang sought to clarify
what the hospital was promising.

"I said, 'You're going to pay for him for the rest of his life?' " she
recounted. "I said, 'Does your negotiated rate with the nursing home cover
his rehabilitation and health care needs, too? What about burial costs?' I
mean, you have to think this all through. They told me the lawyers were
hammering it out."

But the hospital later changed course.

In late September, Mr. Yu entered the courtroom of New York State Supreme
Court Judge Lottie E. Wilkins on a taxi-yellow gurney. Dressed in a
hospital gown, he smoothed his thin hair and saluted the judge in English.
Squeezing a small rubber ball for exercise, he was then wheeled behind
closed doors, accompanied by his guardian, for what Judge Wilkins called a
status conference, closed to the news media.

No record was made of the proceeding. But the guardian said that she
learned then that the hospital was contemplating sending him back to his
relatives in China.

"All of a sudden, it became, 'Great, the family wants him back,' after the
hospital repeatedly told me the family did not," Ms. Huang, the guardian,
said.

The hospital declined to discuss the case, citing patient confidentiality.
Mr. Menkes said, "We are not going to force people back" to their
homelands.

Whether, as a person declared incapacitated by the court, Mr. Yu possesses
the ability to consent to a repatriation remains to be seen. Ms. Huang
said the case lay on ground ungoverned by guidelines, where hospitals are
neither required to nor prohibited from doing anything with such patients.

"My position is that I need to look out for what is in his best interest,"
Ms. Huang said.

After the September hearing, The Times contacted Mr. Yu's 30-year-old son
in Ningbo, China. The son, Cheng Jun Yu, said he and his mother had been
estranged from Mr. Yu since he left for the United States. "The family
situation wasn't merry," the son said.

"We do not wish for him to return," he continued. "He will be a burden for
me, and I do not have the time or resources to care for him. My mother has
established a new family, and I do not wish for this matter to disrupt her
life. If they want to send him back, they will have to negotiate with the
Chinese government to see if the government will care for him."

Into the Unknown

Hospitals say the federal government ignores the burden posed by these
patients. In fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not assume any
responsibility for the health care of illegal immigrants unless they are
in federal immigration detention, said a spokeswoman, Kelly Nantel, and it
does not get involved in repatriations undertaken by hospitals.

For some hospitals, such repatriations are routine, for others a last
resort. And, just as some forcibly repatriate patients, others do so only
with consent — although consent is a murky concept when patients are told
they have no alternative. While some hospitals pay for an immigrant's
repatriation and for their care in their homelands; others never make any
inquiries into how deported patients have fared.

"We don't do any follow-up," said Sister McBride at St. Joseph's in Phoenix.

Even patients at hospitals that never repatriate immigrants can find
themselves embroiled in discharge plans of considerable complexity, as the
case of Darwin Castro demonstrates.

One day last May, Mr. Castro, a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from
Honduras, was getting a ride home from his construction job in Oklahoma
City when the driver crashed into a tree. By the time he arrived at the
Oklahoma University hospital, he was in shock from extreme blood loss and
rushed into an operating room for surgery on a badly wounded liver. He
also suffered a traumatic brain injury, facial and arm cuts and a broken
hand.

Alerted by Honduran friends to the accident, Mr. Castro's cousin, Wilmer
Ubener Reaños, 25, called the hospital from

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