ICE calls detainee fatalities 'exceedingly rare'—except two have died this week on their watch

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 18, 2017 · 10:22 AM PDT

2017/05/18 · 10:22

MESA, AZ - FEBRUARY 28: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), security contractors frisk Honduran immigration detainees deporting them on a flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on February 28, 2013 in Mesa, Arizona. ICE operates 4-5 flights per week from Mesa to Central America, deporting hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained in western states of the U.S. With the possibility of federal budget sequestration, ICE released 303 immigration detainees in the last week from detention centers throughout Arizona. More than 2,000 immigration detainees remain in ICE custody in the state. Most detainees typically remain in custody for several weeks before they are deported to their home country, while others remain for longer periods while their immigration cases work through the courts. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

As information continues to come in about the tragic suicide of Jean Jimenez-Joseph while under ICE custody in a Georgia facility earlier this week, CNN reports and ICE confirms that yet another detainee in the state has died. Atulkumar Babubhai Patel died in a Georgia hospital Tuesday afternoon after complaining of shortness of breath, becoming the eighth person this year to die while under ICE’s watch:

Patel arrived at the Atlanta airport on May 10 on a flight from Quito, Ecuador. Authorities denied him entry into the United States because he did not have the necessary immigration documents, ICE said.

He was transferred to ICE custody in the Atlanta City Detention Center on Thursday, according to the agency. An initial medical screening at the time determined he had high blood pressure and diabetes. Two days later, Patel was transported to the hospital after a nurse checking his blood sugar noticed he had shortness of breath, ICE said. He died on Tuesday afternoon.

In its statement announcing Patel's death, officials said fatalities in ICE custody are "exceedingly rare."

Which is, of course, a flat-out lie. Since 2003, at least 165 people have died while under ICE custody, with a report by the ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center on immigrant deaths finding that “instead of forcing changes in culture, systems, and processes that could reduce future deaths, ICE’s deficient inspections system essentially swept the agency’s own death review findings under the rug.” In Jimenez-Joseph’s case, he was kept in solitary confinement for nearly three weeks before his suicide.

This news comes as House Republicans—led by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)—are today marking up bills that would “turbo-charge” Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda by authorizing “officers to make an arrest, even for people who have only committed civil offenses, without a warrant.” More arrests of undocumented immigrants—many of them mothers and fathers who don’t have any criminal record, according to new ICE data—means thousands more detainees under the watch of a clearly incompetent federal agency.

ICE calls detainee fatalities 'exceedingly rare'—except two have died this week on their watch

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