Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

By Bill Malinowski
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The American Civil Liberties Union Rhode Island Affiliate has urged the state's Congressional delegation to refrain from lobbying Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, to have immigrant detainees returned to the embattled Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls.

Steven Brown, the ACLU's executive director for Rhode Island, issued a two-page news release today that he sent to Sen. Jack Reed, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. James Langevin and Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, all Democrats, in response to comments that Daniel F. Cooney, chairman of the Central Falls Detention Facility Corp., made to The Journal this week.

"Frankly, I'm looking at it like I'm running a Motel 6,'' Cooney said. "I don't care if it's Guantanamo Bay. We want to fill the beds.''

Cooney and the board members are hoping that the Congressional delegation will look favorably on this week's move to fire Anthony Ventetuolo, the jail's former executive director who was in charge when a Chinese national, Hui Liu "Jason'' Ng, died in custody last summer. The death prompted ICE to remove all of its 153 immigrant detainees, a move that is costing the jail about $100,000 a week and has placed the facility in financial peril.

"Mr. Cooney's astonishingly glib comment comparing Wyatt to Guantanamo is -- particularly in light of Wyatt's complicity in Ng's death and the ongoing disclosures about torture at Guantanamo -- nothing short of mind-boggling,'' Brown wrote. "We fervently urge you to resist the CFDFC's entreaties and not reward the mindset and culture that led to Mr. Ng's death.''

Cooney said that he had no intention of sounding "cavalier.'' Instead, he was simply trying to emphasize that the board needs to pull out all stops to get prisoners in the Wyatt jail and make the facility financially viable again.

 Tags  Ng & Wyatt & Central Falls & immigration & Malinowski

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