The health of an amputee held in a Georgia ICE prison worsens | American immigration
The health of Rodney Taylor, a Liberian-born amputee who is missing three fingers on one hand, has continued to deteriorate after he was arrested by ICE and detained at the Stuart Immigration Detention Center in Georgia, and his case has now been supported by a US Senator.
Taylor, who has been detained for almost a year, told The Guardian that he was diagnosed with bone spurs in his back, causing severe pain, while the silicone padding on one of his prosthetic legs had deteriorated, causing chafing and boils.
He also had problems with high blood pressure, which led to a tingling sensation in his right arm, dizziness, headaches and a recent change in medication, said his fiancée, Mildred Pierre.
“I feel it [being detained] “It’s draining my body,” Taylor told The Guardian.
Taylor’s plight was supported by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, who wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. In the letter, Warnock urges Noem to “give full and fair consideration, consistent with all agency rules and regulations…of the pressing health issues facing Mr. Taylor,” citing a Guardian report on his case.
The letter says Taylor is a “respected barber,” [and] “A cancer awareness advocate, he has served and lived in his community for 40 years.” He asserts that Taylor “has received widespread support from his community, including from a local elected official. A lieutenant from the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office and the Chairman of the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners described Mr. Taylor as a ‘person of excellent character’ and ‘an asset to his community’ respectively.”
In response to an inquiry about the letter, the Department of Homeland Security requested that a copy of the letter be sent, but no response was received after receiving the copy via email.
Taylor and Pierre have a large family with seven children. Pierre recently drove nearly 300 miles round trip to see Stuart with five of their children. She was unable to make the trip for two months. When she arrived, a staff member told her there was a “new policy” that only allowed two adults and three children per visit. Two children over 18 years of age; She ended up staying in the car so they could visit Taylor.
Since Warnock sent his letter at the end of October, a judge from the same federal court where the attorney filed a habeas corpus petition seeking Taylor’s release on bail while his immigration case is decided, has ruled in another case that the Trump administration’s policy of not allowing bonds violates existing immigration law.
The judge hearing Taylor’s September petition on the case has not yet issued a ruling.
His mother brought him to the United States on a medical visa when he was a child, and Taylor had 16 surgeries. He is now 46 years old and has lived in the United States almost his entire life. He got engaged just 10 days before he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January — stemming from a burglary conviction as a teenager, for which the state of Georgia pardoned him in 2010, according to attorney Sarah Owings, who shared some of Taylor’s papers with the Guardian.
Taylor has a pending application for US residency – known as a green card – but has not been released on bail. He says he suffered multiple accidents while in detention, including screws coming out of his prosthetic legs, causing him to fall and injure his hand; At various times, he was unable to charge or calibrate the batteries in his prosthetic legs, leading to other injuries.
At the same time, the Trump administration dismantled the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the Ombudsman for Immigrant Detention (Oido) — two federal offices that provided oversight of health care and other issues.
Attorney Helen Parsonage, who filed a petition in September seeking Taylor’s release on bail, said the latest ruling on mandatory detention would not benefit her client because of his decades-long conviction, and because the federal government insisted in court that Taylor already had a deportation order.
“They’re digging in their heels, fighting tooth and nail” to keep Taylor locked up, Parsonage said, referring to Ace.
“Members of Senator Warnock’s team visited Rodney Taylor at the Stewart Detention Center to hear about his conditions and to better advocate for his treatment,” Warnock’s office said in an email. “The Senator’s office has also raised medical concerns to detention center leadership and congressional liaison officials at ICE regarding several Stewart detainees,” the office said.
Parsonage said Taylor’s case, now in its 11th month of detention, “is indicative of the fact that conditions of confinement no longer belong to the Department of Homeland Security.” “It’s a sign of a lack of humanity when you see someone struggling daily and their release being held back. Cruelty doesn’t begin to describe it.”
Taylor told The Guardian he “appreciates it.”[s] message [from Senator Warnock]. But watching the way this administration operates, they don’t seem to care, and that’s sad to say. “They have their own agenda.”