From the New York Times:

Advocates say Xiu Ping Jiang’s case demonstrates the need for protections for people with mental disabilities in the nation’s immigration courts.

Jiang has a history of mental illness and was forcibly sterilized in China before immigrating to the United States. She was held in a Florida immigration detention center for a year and a half without legal representation or medical treatment, and fell into a suicidal depression. After the New York Times wrote about her, an immigration judge reopened her case. Jiang is now out on bail, living with family in New York.

If immigration courts were required to offer the same basic protections for the mentally disabled as any other court, advocates say, Ms. Jiang’s prolonged detention — which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and put her life at risk — could have been avoided.

Hers is one of several cases cited in a 15-page letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that asks for such protections, including the appointment of counsel to anyone with a mental disability in deportation proceedings, and the appointment of guardians ad litem to speak on behalf of those found mentally incompetent.

(New York Times photo)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 10:35 pm and is filed under international, law, mental health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.