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HIV POSITIVE MAN FIGHTS DEPORTATION
Juan Carlos Isabel, a native of the Dominican Republic, is facing deportation to that country.  He was convicted of a robbery in the New York City subway, a crime for which he was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to enter a drug rehabilitation program.  He refused to enter the rehab program, and this refusal to comply with his sentence violated his probation.  That in turn had the effect of increasing his original sentence, with the result that he became an aggravated felon.  Now he is facing deportation. 
Isabel is fighting his deportation on the ground that he is HIV positive and HIV treatments in the Dominican Republic are either impossible to obtain or are so expensive as to be unavailable.  According to the World Health Organization, AIDS treatment is very difficult to obtain there.  An interesting twist to Isabel’s plight is that he claims to have not participated in the rehab program because it would have made him ineligible to continue receiving his Medicaid funded HIV treatment. 
HIV and AIDS play an odd role in immigration law.  It is a basis of inadmissibility, but it can also form the basis of an asylum claim.  Another irony is that so long as Isabel is in detention pending deportation, he is receiving treatment for his condition, treatment that will not be available after his deportation.