Child's Dying Wish Going Unfulfilled

I don't do this very often but this story has nothing to do with immigration. Just like the phrase "anchor baby"and the rabid response by many nativists to the DREAM Act this story highlights how our society has forgotten the humanity in children. Hug your kids tightly tonight because their innocence doesn't count for much these days.

The heartbroken family of a 10-year-old Nebraska girl diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, who is not expected to live through the end of the month, say the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the child's dying wish: that her incarcerated father be furloughed to be by his child's bedside when she dies.

Her father is serving the final year of a five-year sentence for a drug conviction in a minimum security prison camp in South Dakota, three and a half hours from his daughter.

'I Am Sorry'

He's offered to serve double that if they'll only let him be with his daughter when she dies,

Fighting for her life since she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 3, seven years ago. But in the past six months, she has taken a severe turn downward. Doctors declared her condition terminal in October. Last month, they found they couldn't transfer her to a children's hospital closer to her Lincoln, Neb., home because they said she wouldn't survive the trip, Lori Yaeger said. As Jayci's health has see-sawed from stable to the brink-of-death time and again in the past few months, her parents have been filing request after request for either a temporary furlough or at least a transfer to the halfway house facility an hour from the child's beside. Jason Yaeger is currently serving time at South Dakota's most minimum security federal prison, a former college campus in the middle of town in Yankton. There is a two-foot fence surrounding the facility, and inmates move freely around the facility, he said.

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