It has been more than three months since 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge was found dead in a Pennsylvania detention facility run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still so much left unknown about the circumstances of his death,\u201d Ge\u2019s brother, Yanfeng Ge, said while speaking through an interpreter.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
It has been more than three months since 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge was found dead in a Pennsylvania detention facility run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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Ge\u2019s brother said his family has received no information from the government regarding the circumstances of his death despite their Freedom of Information Act requests
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On Wednesday, the family\u2019s attorney announced they had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the hopes of getting answers<\/p>\n
Ge\u2019s brother said his family has received no information from the government regarding the circumstances of his death despite their Freedom of Information Act requests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen an investigation,\u201d David B. Rankin, partner at Beldock Levine & Hoffman, LLP, said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re here announcing our filing of a Freedom of information Act lawsuit to get some answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rankin filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. The family\u2019s attorney said an autopsy report showed Ge was found in a shower stall at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania \u2014 hanging by his neck with his hands and legs tied behind his back \u2014 something he said could be suspicious.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s part of why we\u2019re looking into this. All we have is an autopsy that has some information but just has these huge questions that we need answers to,\u201d Rankin said.<\/p>\n
Ge \u2014 a resident of Queens and a citizen of China \u2014 was arrested last January in Pennsylvania on charges involving unlawful use of communication devices and related counts, according to ICE.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty in July, was sentenced and released into the custody of ICE before being taken to the Moshannon, where he had been for five days awaiting a hearing when he was found dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere must be accountability for his death,\u201d Yanfeng Ge said while speaking through an interpreter.<\/p>\n
Activists at a news conference Rankin organized Wednesday said former detainees at the same ICE facility have described deplorable conditions there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who I\u2019ve spoken to have said they don\u2019t like going to the medical facilities because then they\u2019re sort of punished for it by being isolated,\u201d Adrianna Torres-Garc\u00eda, a member of the Shut Down Detention Campaign, said. \u201cThey describe not being able to get regularly clean clothes. They describe not being able to get pillows.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the only family member that I had in this country, and I miss him dearly,\u201d Yanfeng Ge said while speaking through an interpreter.<\/p>\n
The attorney for Ge\u2019s family says their own investigation found that Ge was in extreme distress prior to dying and that no one in the facility could speak his language \u2014 Mandarin \u2014 to communicate with him. Because of that, Rankin also said in order for Ge to communicate his needs or any issues to detention staff, he would have to write them on a piece of papers and staff would have to send the note to someone outside of the facility, have them translate it and send it back, which is a process that Rankin said could take days.<\/p>\n
NY1 reached out to ICE for comment, but has not yet heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been more than three months since 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge was found dead in a Pennsylvania detention…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[25,2301,75,84,83,9,24,12,26,63,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-38113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-app-top-stories","9":"tag-immigration","10":"tag-manhattan","11":"tag-manhattan-headlines","12":"tag-manhattan-news","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nia-clark","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}