NEW YORK, CMC:
THE ORGANISATION of American States' (OAS) has appealed to the United States not to deport a Jamaican-born woman suffering from HIV/AIDS because it would be "tantamount to a death sentence".
In a desperate bid to avert the deportation of Marie Mortlock, 41, of the Bronx, lawyers have turned to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Mortlock, a legal permanent resident of the United States, who was convicted in 1987 of selling cocaine, has been fighting a criminal deportation order for a decade.
SEVERE DISCRIMINATION
She said that she would not get proper AIDS medication and treatment in her native Jamaica and would face severe discrimination.
But the Jamaica-based HIV assistance group, Jamaica AIDS Support, says there is no truth to the arguments being made by Mortlock.
If the person is HIV positive and deported they can access the medication free of cost. There have been several other deportees who come even without a prescription and they tell us their status and we take them to the treatment centre and they get their medication," said Tonya Clarke an official from Jamaica AIDS Support.
Mortlock's petition is the first deportation case involving AIDS to be accepted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Though the commission has no enforcement powers, it is considered to have moral authority and an overall record of cooperation by the 35 member-nations of the OAS, including the United States.
Human rights advocates say Mortlock, a former drug addict with a long history of petty larceny, has turned her life around after a judge ordered her released, in March 2003, after almost three years in immigration detention. The United States had objected to her release.
In court filings, federal lawyers in the United States reportedly threatened sanctions against Jamaica, blamed Mortlock for revealing her 1998 diagnosis of HIV/AIDS, and strongly opposed her release from a series of immigration detention centres in Pennsylvania and Texas.
Two lawyers won Mortlock's release - Sarah Loomis Cave, of the New York law firm, Cleary Gottlieb, and Olivia Cassin, of the Legal Aid Society - using the ruling in Zadvydas v. Davis in which the Supreme Court held that indefinite detention - defined as more than six months - is constitutional only if the detainee is dangerous.
Her doctor, Gabriela Rodriguez-Caprio, said, in an affidavit to the Inter-American Commission, that mediations, nutritional supplements and growth hormones that slow Mortlock's illness are unavailable in Jamaica, adding: "Her missing these medications will lead to rapid progression and death."
But Federal authorities say her medical condition has no bearing on deportation proceedings.
