This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
An undocumented immigrant hopes to avoid deportation after he says he contracted a severe infection in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the Utah County Jail. His daughter fears he soon will die without continued medical care in the United States.
Representatives of Guatemalan Angel Rosa, 55, say that in late 2014, while Rosa was held after a 2013 conviction for illegal re-entry, a backed-up toilet in his cell contributed to Fournier gangrene of the scrotum that spread through his groin and caused his rectum to swell shut.
Rosa, his representatives say, was punished when the clog was discovered and didn't receive care until his infection was advanced.
Utah County Corrections Bureau commander Darin Durfey said Rosa was punished because he's believed to have purposely clogged the toilet in order to be moved to a less nosisy cell. Rosa was treated as soon as his condition was known, Durfey said.
Rosa's 18-year-old daughter, Lorena, a senior at Cache High who helped care for him when he was released from Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in December 2014, said her father's pending removal is causing her to relive the nightmare of his 2013 arrest and later medical emergency.
"They brought him back almost dead to me," Lorena Rosa said. "Now that he's happy and still recovering, they want to take him again."
Rosa's request for humanitarian relief first was reported last week by the daily news hour "Democracy Now!"
Rosa, a married father of five who worked as a landscaper in Hyrum, has lived in Utah for 18 years, according to his defense. Four of Rosa's children are U.S. citizens, and Lorena Rosa said the other holds a green card.
He was deported in November 2001, a year after pleading guilty in 1st District Court to abuse of his son — reduced in 2008 from a class A to a class B misdemeanor after he met a series of probation conditions, including substance abuse and domestic violence counseling.
Family members told his current attorney that Rosa had been a heavy drinker and was taking detox medication that impaired his judgment when he became excessively rough during horseplay with his son. He has not been abusive since, they said.
Rosa's defense says his exact date and point of re-entry is unknown, and Lorena Rosa said she was too young to provide a reliable account. From the time he was deported to his arrest for re-entry in April 2013, his Utah record consists of a traffic violation, in 2009, and a fishing violation in 2012.
Lorena Rosa describes herself as a "daddy's girl" and said her father is a steadying force in her life. His 2013 arrest traumatized her family, she said, and led to frequent arguments. Money was short. She became depressed and refused to eat.
"We felt like the family was falling apart," she said. "It hurts that my dad wasn't there when I got my first job or my driver's license. Immigration doesn't know what they do when they take away that person that [you] love."
The Utah County Jail held a daily average of 167 ICE detainees last year, Durfey said, and housed 224 as of Wednesday. ICE detainees are grouped together when possible, he said, for logistical reasons. A dormitory might hold as many as 12, but Durfey said Rosa was sharing a two-person cell in early October 2014, when his toilet was found to have been clogged by a plastic bag full of papers, food and other items.
Rosa was written up for destruction of jail property and — whether it was his wish or not — removed from his cell. Durfey said Rosa's cellmate later testified that he was angry at Rosa for clogging the toilet, so much that he wished he could fight Rosa.
Vanessa Juarez, a Salt Lake City paralegal who works with Hartford, Conn.-based Family and Friends Against Deportation, said her conversations with Rosa and other inmates indicate Rosa had three or more cellmates at the time of the clog, and that ICE detainees are "treated like cattle." Rosa lived in squalor as a result of the broken toilet, she said, and that may have caused his infection.
"Who plugged the toilet, I couldn't tell you," Juarez said. "It's alleged that he's the one who did it, but they can't pinpoint that, at all. I've spoken to other detainees at the same time, and that was not the only toilet that was not functioning properly. I'm not trying to discredit the facility, but it's like everyone else: They're trying to cover their butts."
Durfey said the reality is a far cry from the grisly scene that Juarez said inmates have described. Deputies conduct checks "at least" every hour, he said, and a clogged toilet would not have gone unnoticed for long.
"I would place [our jail] against any other in terms of level of cleanliness," he said.
Durfey said they learned of Rosa's condition from a fellow inmate Nov. 30 and provided care the same day. Rosa was moved to the jail's medical housing Dec. 1, then to the hospital Dec. 3.
He underwent what medical records selected by his defense describe as "fairly extensive surgery" and was hospitalized for more than two weeks. Lorena Rosa said she flung her phone across the room after another inmate called to say her family should contact the hospital if they wanted to see Rosa alive. Because he was still in ICE custody, they were not permitted to see him, she said.
"If I knew he died, not being able to hold him, I knew I wasn't going to be able to forgive myself," she said.
According to ICE, 155 detainees have died while in custody since October 2003; two in Utah.
In June 2014, 38-year-old Mexican national Santiago Sierra-Sanchez was found unresponsive in the Utah County Jail's medical unit — placed there after complaining of back pain — and later died in the hospital. ICE lists the cause of death as a staph infection. Durfey said he believes it was pneumonia, but that either way, Sierra-Sanchez was in his facility for less than 12 hours and could not have become ill there.
In March 2011, Bosnian Amra Miletic died after being held in Weber County Jail, her cause of death determined to be chronic colitis and an irregular heartbeat. Later that year, a searing federal audit found that the jail's detainees hadn't been properly screened for tuberculosis, initial health screenings often weren't reviewed by staff, the jail lacked a chronic care program, and a detainee with a history of diabetes went seven weeks before being seen by a doctor and receiving medication.
Miletic's family later filed a federal lawsuit against Weber County and Sheriff Terry Thompson, dismissed in a summary judgment by U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball earlier this month.
Rosa has had several recurrences of his infection since he left UVRMC on supervised release in December 2014.
Lorena Rosa, granted permission to home-school so she could take him to appointments and translate, said he emerged from the hospital pale, shrunken and delicate. He also has high blood pressure and diabetes, and Lorena Rosa said her father's medication was so heavy that "he was in the clouds most of the time," but if he went just 20 minutes without a dose, he felt like he was burning, or about to faint.
His health problems were at times worsened by his anxiety over deportation, Lorena Rosa said. His well-being has since improved, she said, but her family fears that in Guatemala, "if he faints, he's gone."
A little more than a year ago, the Rosas reached out to Juarez, and she connected them with Hartford-based attorney Thomas Rome and paralegal Mark Reid — who himself won freedom after being detained by ICE for 16 months.
"We're committed to this fight, and we think it's an extraordinary case that is an example of injustice in the detention system," Rome said Thursday.
Rome and Reid acquired a note from Rosa's doctor, Providence Family Medicine's James Mathews, who writes that "he should remain where his family and medical cares are available, specifically in the Cache County, Utah area."
Said Lorena Rosa: "Even here, taking him to the hospital just barely gives us hope."
But they've had little luck swaying authorities. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled in November 2015 that "while we are sympathetic to the applicant's situation," Rosa's motion to reopen a previously failed appeal was tardy and insufficient, and that he now is ineligible for humanitarian asylum.
Their request earlier this month that the Department of Homeland Security exercise its prosecutorial discretion was rejected, Reid said. At the same time, they filed another motion to reopen Rosa's appeal and for an emergency stay of removal.
In a statement emailed to The Tribune on Thursday, ICE cited a November 2014 memo from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson that clarifies methods of prioritizing "threats to national security, public safety, and border security."
Wrote ICE: "Mr. Rosa has felony convictions for illegally re-entering the United States after being deported and cruelty to a child, as well as multiple misdemeanor convictions. Based on his criminal history, his final orders of removal, his previous deportation, and his re-entry conviction, Mr. Rosa is an ICE enforcement priority."
Rosa was arrested again by U.S. Marshals on Jan. 15 and held in the Cache County Jail for failing to visit a probation officer during his yearlong supervised release.
Rosa told U.S. District Judge David Nuffer on Wednesday that he believed he was satisfying the conditions of his release by reporting to ICE's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program and by wearing an electronic monitoring device.
Nuffer sentenced him to time served before remanding him to ICE custody for removal. Rosa's latest appeals court filing may at least buy him a few weeks to petition for DHS discretion.
Thursday, to the dismay of his defense, Rosa was again booked into Utah County Jail.
Twitter: @matthew_piper —
Immigration raids
At least 121 people have been detained in raids that began during the holiday season. Last week, 22 Democratic senators asked President Barack Obama to halt the deportations, citing the threats of violence and death the mothers and children face when they're returned to Central America. Administration officials cite an increase in the numbers of families and children as one reason for the raids.
The Associated Press