Deported in Coma, Saved Back in U.S.
GILA BEND, Ariz. — "Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.
Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali."DEBORAH SONTAG, PILAR CONCI and TINA LEE in the New York Times.
(Part Five in the New York Times' "Getting Tough" series of articles that explore "efforts by government and others to compel illegal immigrants to leave the United States.")