Detainees at ICE detention centers are dying at a higher rate than ever and it’s hard to argue it’s unintentional.
Sixty-Eight year old Abelardo Avellaneda-Delgado was arrested by ICE in Georgia on April 9, in good health. After 2 debilitating months in custody, ICE contractors ignored his stroke level blood pressure reading, deciding the 68 year old was fit for transfer. During the 5 hour drive on May 5, 2025 Abelardo passed away. According to reports from first responders, Avellaneda-Delgado’s actual time and circumstances of death clearly differ from ICE’s stated version of events.
Devastatingly, Abelardo would not be the oldest detainee to die in ICE custody in 2025. Just over a month later in Florida, 75 year old Isidro Perez had spent 21 days in ICE custody, and the last 9 days in Larkin Community Hospital due to “an unstable angina”. He had a history of heart attacks and according to his ex-partner María, had to sleep on the detention facility floor while he waited for his medication and an infirmary bed to open up. A day after being returned to Geo Group’s Krome Service Processing Center (KSPC) Isidro complained of “chest pains” to staff, who only acted over an hour later to administer CPR, before he was pronounced dead.
These cases are by no means anomalies. Intensifying anti-immigrant rhetoric in recent years has contributed to apprehensions, and detainee deaths at ICE-run facilities rising quickly under both party’s leadership. From 4 deaths in FY2023 to 12 in FY2024. A figure that has already been passed this year.
ICE and its contractors have vicious reputations of mistreatment, neglect and wrongful death. CoreCivic’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, where Avellaneda-Delgado was to be transferred, had been subject to a surprise inspection by the DHS in 2023, being found as “compromising the health, safety, and rights of detainees.” Often by denying translation of communications with staff, failing to respond to medical grievances, and repeatedly forcing detainees assigned to “non-punitive” segregation into “disciplinary” segregation, against PBNDS 2011 requirements, among other violations.
Conditions in Kansas’ FCI Leavenworth facility have been similarly condemned. On May 29, 2025 multiple organizations including the ACLU, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Federal Public Defender for the District of Kansas, wrote a letter to the DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) claiming that, among other things:
“a significant number of detained immigrants at FCI Leavenworth continue to be held in custody even though they have already won their immigration cases…where an Immigration Judge has concluded that they would likely be persecuted or tortured if deported…ICE has not appealed, [detainees] continue to be held in custody…after they have won their cases, in some instances for more than three months.”
The victims of America’s bipartisan crackdown on immigrants have been, in reality, far from the storied monsters used to manufacture its so-called “migrant crisis”. According to the CATO institute 65% of those detained by ICE have no criminal record. Many have lived in the US for decades, much like Isidro Perez, who was nearing 60 years in the United States from Cuba.
In an unprecedented attack on a largely peaceful and admirable demographic, the federal government has allocated another $170 Billion to Immigration and Border-related activity, which would make ICE the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the country, as well as $45 Billion to new Immigration Detention Facilities including a planned “family facility”.
As the number of detainees skyrockets, existing—already hostile—facilities are overcrowded and less concerned than ever about detainee well-being. FCI Leavenworth has reportedly refitted many four-bunk cells with three triple bunks to fit nine detainees in one 8’ by 12’ cell.
Detainees have been put through all of this, while facing the looming threat of deportation, to anywhere, at any time. Ron Gochez of Unión Del Barrio told Democracy Now! that the group has seen community members taken by ICE in L.A. who ended up in Mexico City that same night.
July 3, 2025 the Supreme court ruled that the Trump Administration could deport eight men, held for six weeks in a U.S. military base in Djibouti, east Africa, to South Sudan, a country with which seven of the men have no ties. According to the group’s attorney Trina Realmuto, “it is possible, if not probable,” they will be arrested and detained upon arrival.
ICE is also using transportation between detention centers to inflict suffering. Forty-four year-old Marie Ange Blaise emigrated from Haiti and was first detained in February 2025 in the U.S. Virgin Islands, before being transferred to ICE custody in Puerto Rico, and then Miami. Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO) Miami transferred her to ERO New Orleans, who just over a month later transferred her back to ERO Miami. Multiple women who had been detained with Blaise spoke with USA Today reporting lack of medical supplies and overcrowded cells, as well as being “handcuffed and chained on buses for extended periods of time without bathroom access.”
On April 25, 2025 after roughly three months in ICE custody, Marie Ange Blaise died in her cell at the Broward Transitional Center. The Miami Herald interviewed another detainee at the facility who told them her blood pressure “measured with a top number of 156” and that “she was given some pills and told to lie down.”
Since Trump’s 2020 presidential victory anti-immigrant rhetoric has become commonplace even among many of his opponents, leading to a political environment perfectly suited to justify these deaths—despite broad public disapproval of ICE conduct (57%).
With the funding, anonymity, and political cover afforded to Immigration agents, along with the lack of meaningful resistance from any of those in power, human rights abuses and deaths are already increasing dramatically and will continue to do so. ICE is not only failing to prevent in-custody deaths, but intentionally fostering a detention and deportation environment where death is an increasingly common outcome.
Sources:
The Appeal Article
https://theappeal.org/ice-death-in-custody-jorge-avellaneda-delgado/
ICE Death Report Avellaneda-Delgado
ICE Death Report Isidro Perez
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/cuban-national-dies-ice-custody
Democracy Now!
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/9/los_angeles_protests_immigration_ice_raids
EL País Article
DHS 2023 Stewart Inspection
ACLU Letter to DOJ & BOP
CATO Institute Report
https://www.cato.org/blog/65-people-taken-ice-had-no-convictions-93-no-violent-convictions
Guardian Article On Spending Bill’s Immigration Provisions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/02/immigration-trump-big-beautiful-bill
Politico Article On Third Country Deportations
Marie Ange Blaise ICE Death Report
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article305336021.html
Miami Herald On Marie Ange Blaise
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article305336021.html
USA Today On Marie Ange Blaise
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/29/haitian-woman-dies-ice-custody/83352108007/#
Newsweek ICE Approval
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-immigration-approval-rating-hits-new-low-poll-shows-2091337
TheFreeLineNow 