PROVIDENCE — The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is providing legal representation to the family of Hiu Lui Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese national who died last month while in immigration custody at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls.

Ng, a computer engineer from New York, died from complications of cancer, according to the Office of State Medical Examiners. Ng’s lawyers said he also had a fractured spine, and was denied medical care both at the Wyatt facility and a Vermont jail where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for bed space.

John J. McConnell Jr., a cooperating attorney with the Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union, is “gathering information about Ng’s death and investigating any potential legal claims,” according to the ACLU. The investigation is expected to take several months, and any lawsuit is not expected to be filed until that investigation is complete, the ACLU said yesterday.

ACLU executive director Steven Brown said, “Mr. Ng’s tragic death highlights many serious questions about both the operation of this country’s immigration detention system and the adequacy of medical care provided to inmates in that system.”

Brown added, “We are hopeful that our investigation, and any legal action that may follow from it, will ultimately provide some answers to those questions and help foster meaningful changes to that system in order to avert similar tragedies. His family deserves no less.”

Ng’s lawyers in New York sent a letter last month to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, seeking a federal criminal investigation. The lawyers allege that Ng was denied proper medical care and legal access at Wyatt where he spent the final month of his life, while his undetected, undiagnosed cancer withered his body and left him unable to walk.

Meanwhile, members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation have also sought a Homeland Security investigation into Ng’s death.

kziner@projo.com