Sick baby traveling to Honolulu for Medical Attention dies after being held up by immigration

[dkf]

I'm so sick for this family. :(

"Luaipou Futi and a nurse banged on a locked door at Honolulu International Airport Friday morning and begged for medical help for Futi's 14-day-old son, who had flown here from American Samoa for heart surgery and was becoming distressed in the warm room.

City paramedics took Michael to Kaiser Permanente's Moana-lua Medical Center, but he died later that morning. Emergency Services Department officials said they received a call at 6:10 a.m. and the child was taken to Kaiser Moanalua in critical condition.

It should have only taken 10 to 15 minutes to get Michael from the airport to Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children, where he was scheduled to be hospitalized on Friday and examined for a probable heart operation, Fried said.

But immigration officials detained Michael, his mother and Veavea, apparently believing there was "some problem with the visa waiver form for the mother," Fried said. In fact, Fried said, all the travel documents were in order."

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080213/NEWS01/802130417/1001

[Hekate]

1. This appalling story is now all over the Pacific. Mrs Futi is an American citizen...

It is unfathomable to any thinking person what the goddamned Homeland Security could have been thinking to detain a nurse travelling without luggage, a new baby on oxygen, and the baby's mother. And not only to detain them, but to LOCK THEM UP.

It's enough to make the angels weep. I know it did me.

I want my country back.

Hekate