Pedro Arriago-Santoya has become the seventh person to die while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this fiscal year, and the fourth to die within the last two years after being jailed at a private prison in Georgia “that federal investigators found last year to be rife with mold and chronically understaffed,” The Daily Beast reports.
Arriago-Santoya died from “cardio-pulmonary arrest secondary to multi-organ system failure, endocarditis, dilated cardiomyopathy with a low ejection fraction and respiratory failure,” an ICE release states, claiming he had “initially complained to staff at the Stewart Detention Center of abdominal pain” and was subsequently transferred to two hospitals, the second “for surgery consultation due to suspected gall bladder disease.” There he went into cardiac arrest twice—the first time, doctors “restored his pulse and oxygen levels.” The second time, he did not survive.
As in other statements announcing deaths of detainees in custody, ICE mentioned Arriago-Santoya’s criminal history but did not mention that he was being jailed a private prison operated by a company that had to change its name from Corrections Corporation of America to CoreCivic as part of a PR rebranding. “Stewart has been a particular trouble spot for the agency,” The Daily Beast continues, “with federal investigators reporting last year that staff described a ‘chronic shortage’ of medical personnel, calling the facility’s inadequacies ‘a ticking time bomb.’”
According to the report from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, one detainee complained about waiting 10 weeks “to get off site to receive a chest X-ray.” Another detainee who had to work in the kitchen said “he was at times ordered to serve expired or moldy food.” Stewart was also at the center of a lawsuit last year alleging that detainees were threatened with solitary confinement—which is torture—if they didn’t work for as little as $1 a day in order to make the company money.
The seven ICE deaths this fiscal year don’t even include the deaths of seven migrant children since last year after being taken into U.S. custody. The recently released autopsy report for 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez showed that the boy, unlike Arriago-Santoya, was never even taken to a hospital after he got sick while in Border Patrol custody. Instead, he died alone, next to his cell’s toilet.