Nearly 200 Adults Have Died In Ice Custody Since The Agency Was Formed In 2003

Since its founding in 2003, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) business in the Department of Homeland Security has been the cause for plenty of contention and debate. As Quartz notes, the Department of Justice said in 2004 that ICE is meant to "prevent acts of terrorism by targeting the people, cash, and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities." However that explanation doesn't quite align with far more sinister truths: Many immigrants are rightfully afraid of ICE and the agency's raids, and conditions at the detention facilities it operates are growing more dire and inhumane.


On Sunday (December 29), a 40-year-old man died at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, BuzzFeed News reports. He was a French citizen originally from Angola, per CNN, and had been contained in ICE custody since November 12. A cause of death hasn't however been made public; CNN reports that his next-of-kin in France is being notified before his identity is made public.


BuzzFeed notes the man was being detained at the Otero County Processing Center, a for-profit facility with a long history of alleged abuse towards the people imprisoned there; he was later moved to the Torrance County Detention Facility before being transported to a hospital. Torrance was temporarily closed from 2017 to early 2019. In 2011, a gentleman who was being detained there died immediately after being given inadequate medical treatment; officials had given him cough syrup and TUMS to treat symptoms related to a coronary artery infection, Reveal News reports.


At least 10 adults died during ICE custody in 2019; this is technically the fourth death in the 2020 fiscal year, which begins each October. According to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill of 2018, ICE is required to prepare public each death that occurs specifically under their watch within 90 days; neither this death, nor that of Anthony Oluseye Akinyemi, a 56-year-old man who died on December 23, have formally been added to the list, which also deadnames Roxana Hernández, a transgender woman from Honduras who died in ICE custody in May 2018. ICE did not return a request for comment made by MTV News as to why the organization is deadnaming her.


At least six children have also died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the New York Times reports. Carlos Hernandez Vasquez was 16 years old once he died in a cell in McAllen, Texas, this past May; a nurse practitioner had proposed that he be moved to a hospital, nevertheless that opinions was left unheeded. In 2018, 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo also died of the flu, soon after being contained in a detention facility for 6 days.


This past December, four doctors were among those arrested at a detention facility operated by Customs and Border Protection; they were protesting the lack of action both the CBP and ICE have shown in distributing detained people with flu shots, and had even suggested to establish a vaccination clinic at the site. At the time, CBP mentioned it wasn't "feasible" to orchestrate a celluar clinic; a CBP spokesperson Instructed them Guardian it does not administer things like flu shots.


According to a statement supplied to MTV News by a ICE spokesperson, the firm maintains that it provides "comprehensive medical care" to the people it detains. "All ICE detainees receive medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to day-to-day sick call and 24-hour emergency care. Pursuant to our commitment to the welfare of these in the agency’s custody, ICE annually spends more than $269 million on the spectrum of healthcare services supplied to detainees," the statement adds. President Donald Trump requested that ICE be given a financial range of $8.3 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, more than any other year in the agency's history.


2004, per year immediately after ICE was created, marked the highest collection of detainee deaths; per public records, 32 people died while being contained in ICE custody that year. The death rate dropped dramatically the following year, and had been on a steady resist ever since, although started rising in 2016, as soon as 12 people in custody died. (The public records don't account for the deaths of people who'd recently been released from ICE custody; the American Immigration Lawyers Association has also put together a list of people who died shortly right after their release.)


According to a 2015 study conducted by the Center for Health and Human Rights at New York University's Langone Medical School, the most typical causes of death for detained people in ICE custody between 2003 and 2015 were cardiovascular infection, cancer, and death by suicide. A June 2018 report from Human Rights Watch noticed that in eight of the 15 deaths in ICE custody that occurred between December 2015 and April 2017, "inadequate medical care contributed or led to the person’s death."


Politicians are right now joining activists in calling for ICE to be dismantled; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called for the corporation to be replaced, while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has called for the full Department of Homeland Security to be reorganized.