Associated Press - Sunday, November 15, 1992

In the nine months since, her newborn child has died, she has been taken from her husband, and the government claims she is HIV-positive. She is now in a New York refugee detention center, waiting to see if she will be allowed to stay in the United States.

"I haven't committed any crime," she said, speaking in Creole through an interpreter in a telephone interview Friday. "I don't like it. It's a place for criminals. Why am I in jail?"

Lloyd Sherman, an INS lawyer, said in court papers that she tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and was thus "inadmissible to the United States."

Her attorney, David Anderson of the American University Human Rights Law Clinic in Washington, said the INS has never proven she was tested for the virus. He said her husband remains held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, among several hundred refugees who the government says are AIDS-positive.

Success, 22, and her husband fled Haiti by boat Feb. 4 after her parents, supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, were killed by government troops.

Her son, Ricardo, was born May 27 at the military base hospital in Guantanamo Bay.

"Three days later, they sent me back to the camp," she recalled. "Shortly after, it started raining and rained nonstop for three days. Both myself and the baby got sick."

The mother and her baby were transferred to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington on Sept. 2. The baby died of pneumonia there Sept. 15.

Her lawyers blame poor camp conditions.

Grover Joseph Rees, the INS's general counsel, did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

Since Oct. 9, Success has been at the detention center in lower Manhattan.

"The only thing I think about is dying," she said. "I lost my mother and father and child in such a short period, and now I'm in jail. All I do is cry, thinking about the people I left behind."

An immigration hearing is scheduled for next month.

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