[/QUOTFor almost four months, doctors and nurses at Advocate Christ Medical Center cared for the young Mexican laborer who had fallen from a roof and lost the ability to speak, breathe or move most parts of his body.
But Quelino Ojeda Jimenez was in the U.S. illegally, and just before Christmas he was taken from the Oak Lawn hospital, loaded on an air ambulance and flown to Oaxaca, capital of the Mexican state where he was born.
His abrupt departure, which Ojeda says was undertaken without his consent, outraged a group of Mexicans living in Chicago who had rallied to his aid, tending to him in the hospital and encouraging him not to give up.
Florinda Marcial, one of his frequent caregivers, said she pleaded with authorities to stop as Ojeda was rolled away on a gurney, dressed in a hospital gown, crying. Authorities at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago also said they tried to intervene.
"They threw him out like he was a piece of garbage," said Horacio Esparza, a disability rights advocate who runs the Progress Center for Independent Living in Forest Park.
Now, the 20-year-old man is in a Mexican hospital that is so resource-poor that it is reusing filters for the breathing machine needed to keep him alive. After an investigation completed late last week, Advocate Health Care — the largest hospital network in Illinois — acknowledged it never obtained Ojeda's permission to transfer him to Mexico.
