ICE starts new fiscal year with yet another death on its watch

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday October 03, 2019 · 7:54 AM PDT

2019/10/03 · 07:54

Protestors link arms after tying children's shoes and keys on the fence outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center during a demonstration against US immigration policy that separates children from parents, in San Diego, California June 23, 2018. - The Otay Mesa Detention Center, owned and operated by private prison company CoreCivic, has an inmate population that includes detainees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images) — Demonstrators protesting the Trump administration's family separation policy outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center last year.

Nebane Abienwi, a 37-year-old man from Cameroon, died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Tuesday, BuzzFeed News reports. “The death is the first in ICE custody in the new fiscal year, which began Tuesday.”

Abienwi had been in the agency’s custody since Sept. 19, after arriving at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Sept. 5. Presumably he was in Border Patrol’s custody during this time. He then was jailed at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, which is operated by private prison profiteer CoreCivic, when he “was rushed to Sharp’s Chula Vista Medical Center Thursday after experiencing a hypertensive event in the middle of the night,” the agency claimed in a statement.

”Physicians at the medical center provided treatment after Mr. Abienwi remained nonresponsive to questions and appeared to be paralyzed on his left side. He remained hospitalized at the Chula Vista hospital until his passing yesterday,” the statement continued. “The medical staff identified the cause of death as brain death secondary to basal ganglia hemorrhage.”

ICE repeatedly claims that "fatalities in ICE custody, statistically, are exceedingly rare,” but that doesn’t erase the fact that at least 25 immigrants, including Abienwi, have died in the agency’s custody under the Trump administration. “At least four others,” NBC News said in a June report, “died shortly after being released from ICE custody.” This number doesn’t include the at least seven children who have died after being taken into federal immigration custody. One of those children, 20-month-old Mariee Juárez, died after falling fatally ill in one of ICE’s family jails.

"In December, an ICE supervisor warned that the ICE Health Service Corps, the agency's own medical service provider, was 'severely dysfunctional' and that 'preventable harm and death to detainees has occurred,’” NBC News reported, yet ICE has detained a record number of people—in defiance of limits set by Congress—and needlessly locked up asylum-seekers who have lawfully sought protection here in the U.S.

“Too many immigrants have died in ICE custody,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted in response to Abienwi’s death. “We need to ensure asylum seekers are welcomed, treated humanely, receive the medical care they need, and are not detained unnecessarily.”

ICE starts new fiscal year with yet another death on its watch

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