McKee’s new head of prisons was previously fired from Wyatt, failed to assist sick prisoners
Hiu Lui Ng was essentially tortured, to death, by prison administrators, including Wayne Salisbury, who at the time served as the warden. Salisbury was fired from his position as Warden in 2009.
January 23, 2023, 8:01 am
By Steve Ahlquist
Hiu Lui Ng was arrested in 2007 on immigration charges and died at Rhode Island Hospital in 2008. In between that time Hiu Lui Ng was held at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where treatment, or even pain relief, for his terminal liver cancer was denied to him. The prison accused Hiu Lui Ng of faking his pain and subjected him to harsh treatment and neglect until days before his death.
Hiu Lui Ng was essentially tortured, to death, by prison administrators including Wayne Salisbury, who at the time served as the warden at the Wyatt. Salisbury was fired from his position as Warden in 2009.
Salisbury, according to a report in the Providence Journal by reporter Jack Perry, has been named interim director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.
Salisbury has served as assistant director to outgoing RIDOC Director Patricia Coyne-Fague for seven years. Director Coyne-Fague left the position to take a position in the Administration of Providence Mayor Brett Smiley.
Last August AMOR RI (Alianza para Movilizar Nuestra Resistencia) held a protest outside the Wyatt to remember Hiu Lui Ng. AMOR RI did a protest in memory of Hiu Lui Ng in 2021 as well.
“Hiu Lui Ng came to New York from Hong Kong with his parents and younger sister in 1992 at the age of 17,” said organizers to the crowd in 2022. “He grew up to become a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building. He had a wife and two children that he was raising in Queens, New York.”
It was in 2001, when Hiu Lui Ng was in the final stages of adjusting his immigration status that he missed a meeting with immigration officials. The notice to appear was sent to the wrong address, and Hiu Lui Ng had no idea he missed a meeting. He was arrested in 2007 and detained at the Wyatt.
After nearly a year inside the Wyatt, Hiu Lui Ng started to complain about intense back pain. Prison authorities accused him of faking it. Despite his pain and inability to walk, immigration officials brought him to New York where Hiu Lui Ng was pressured to renounce all legal avenues to stay in the United States. Some believe that the long, painful trip was organized as a form of torture to get Hiu Lui Ng to comply.
A federal judge ultimately insisted that Hiu Lui Ng be given the care he was pleading for. It was determined that he was suffering from untreated, terminal liver cancer and a broken spine. Hiu Lui Ng died five days later.
His treatment by Wyatt authorities resulted in Immigration authorities cancelling their contract with the Wyatt. The head of the Wyatt Board at the time said that he didn’t care if Wyatt was Guantanamo, as long as he had bodies in beds.
