Araujo was a house painter and roofer from Brazil, living in Milford, MA. On August 9, he was picked up by the city police in Woonsocket, RI on a routine traffic stop, and was unable to produce a valid driver's license. The police booked and fingerprinted Araujo, learned he was an undocumented immigrant under a 2002 deportation order, and called the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Araujo's sister learned he was in jail and drove to Woonsocket. She told the police that he was epileptic and needed medicine; the police told her that he could tell them himself about his medical condition, and told her to go away. (The cops later acknowledged that she visited the station; later they claimed they did not know of Araujo's condition until he was taken away by federal agents. Araujo died later that afternoon. According to the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, his was the 63rd death in ICE custody in three years.
It's unsurprising that ICE has little regard for the health of detainees. When the feds raided a factory in New Bedford several months ago, they shipped dozens of people off to detention facilities in Massachusetts in Texas without asking if they had dependents at home, and without notice to family members. Nor is it strange that people are dehumanized because of a historical construct, like Japs, Jews, Indians, "illegal immigrants." Araujo was, by all accounts, a nice guy.
"There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?" (George Borrow, 1803-1881)
1 comments:
I felt speechless at the moment I finished to read this text. Maybe because I am a immigrant also I fell in some way identify with the story. Of course I have heard stories of unjustice with immigrants before, but still I can't ( and don't want) to get used to them. Every human being deserve to live and die with dignity. I have the hope that Araujo could kept his inner strength and dignity, that no one can't take you if you don't let them, in all that abusive and unacceptable process because the system played...again...a very wrong card trying to do it's so-called work.
"Does all this suffering, this deaths around me, have any sense? Because if not, definitely, surviving have no sense, since the life that have no meaning and depends in coincidence -either you survive it or escape from it- in last place doesn't worth to be lived." (Frankl,1946, pag.116)( translation from spanish to english)
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