A 23-page lawsuit details how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) practices the release of undocumented immigrants only when they believe they are going to die, disposing of detainees so as not to put them on the list of people who die under that agency.
The complaint also notes that ICE sometimes fails to notify families of detainees that they are out of detention centers, even though they know they are about to die.
The lawsuit was filed by the civil rights law firm Hoq Law on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California last Tuesday when attorneys requested information documents pertinent to the case, which ICE did not want to offer.
The documentation was requested under the Freedom of Information Act in April 2022 after the media reported multiple incidents in which ICE released people from custody on their deathbeds, allowing the agency to avoid reporting their claims. deaths to the public, avoid investigations and avoid medical costs.
The human rights agency has requested dozens of records from ICE, including the medical records of four detainees who died in hospitals days after they were released. The FOIA request has gone unanswered for more than 60 days, even though ICE must respond to a request within 20 days.
“The public has a right to know about ICE’s shameful practices of disposing of patients,” said Michael Kaufman, senior attorney for Sullivan and Cromwell Access to Justice with ACLU SoCal.
“The federal government cannot evade responsibility for the fatal health conditions suffered by those in its custody,” he said.
Eunice Cho, a senior attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said ICE’s practice of formally releasing people from its custody at the last moment, before their death, is unconscionable.
“The agency now keeps invaluable records about these practices in public view, in keeping with its culture of secrecy. The public deserves to know the truth of what is going on and the people detained by ICE deserve accountability and change,” he said.
The lawsuit that can be viewed through this https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/lawsuit-against-ice-withholding-documents-related-practice-releasing-people-custody includes the case of Martin Vargas Arellano , a 55-year-old man and ACLU SoCal client, who was released three days before his death last year. After he was released, ICE did not report his death, and Vargas Arellano’s own family and attorney did not learn of his death until weeks later, after they filed a missing person report.
In the case of José Ibarra Bucio, a 27-year-old man, he was also detained at ICE’s Adelanto facility in California, where he suffered a brain hemorrhage and fell into a coma in detention.
Ibarra Bucio was taken to a local hospital and formally released from ICE custody two weeks later. The young man died four weeks after his release from custody, when his family took him off life support.
In the case of Johana Medina León, an asylum seeker, the 25-year-old transgender woman was detained at an ICE facility in Otero County, New Mexico in 2019. While in custody she complained of health problems for a month and gave positive for HIV.
After seven weeks in custody, she complained of chest pains and was taken to the hospital, where ICE released her from custody. She died four days later of pneumonia.
“ICE’s practice of formally releasing people from its custody at the last moment, before their death, is unconscionable,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
“The agency now keeps invaluable records about these practices in public view, in keeping with its culture of secrecy. The public deserves to know the truth of what is happening and the people detained by ICE deserve accountability and change.”
In a statement on ICE’s website, officials said they take “very seriously the health, safety, and well-being of individuals in our care, including those who arrive in ICE custody with pre-existing medical conditions, or who they have never received proper medical care.”
However, in the case of Teka Gulema, also in the lawsuit, an Ethiopian man detained at an ICE facility in Gadsden, Alabama between 2012 and 2015, was left paralyzed by a bacterial infection and taken to a hospital, but remained in custody. from ICE for one year. But when he slipped into a coma at the hospital, he was released from the hospital and died weeks later.
ICE’s practices “raise questions of great public concern regarding its lack of accountability and responsibility for the deaths of immigrant detainees, including those who become ill in custody and are released upon imminent death,” the ACLU wrote.
During 2020, ICE reported the highest number of deaths in immigration detention in 15 years, driven by COVID-19 cases. According to ICE, there are 23,753 people in ICE detention, and currently, 652 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
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