Medical neglect is causing skyrocketing deaths in DHS detention:
Trump 2 has resulted in at least 43 deaths in one year.
There were also thousands of injuries.
Main news sources for this blog post:
- The Prospect: Dead: 43. massive undercount of injured people : 13.
Updating Tables of killed, neglected and injured people:
- The Guardian: Short summaries of lives of those who died in detention and the often suspect circumstances surrounding their death.
- Unspeakable conditions in Florida detention camps reported by Human Rights Watch. Conditions in other camps are no better, according to reports. Family concentration camp that housed Liam is particularly abhorrant.
- The Marshal Project: Kids in ICE detention skyrockets 6 folds under Trump.2
Kids in concentration camps under Trump-Miller-Noem regime.
UNDER-REPORTED INJURIES:
What causes this catastrophic amount of killing injury?
- Detainees in Florida immigration detention centers are being subjected to inhuman conditions, including denial of medical care, overcrowding, and degrading treatment. At least two recent deaths may have been linked to medical neglect.
- These are not isolated incidents, but rather the result of a fundamentally broken detention system that is rife with serious abuses.
- The US government should prioritize community-based alternatives to detention, immediately address the abusive detention conditions, and provide independent oversight of detention facilities
- (Washington, DC, July 21, 2025) – The United States government has subjected immigrants detained in three Florida facilities to abusive, degrading, and in some cases life-threatening conditions, Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch, and Sanctuary of the South said in a report released today.
- Record numbers of death are discussed and named in a
- Deadliest year in two DECADES: Guardian Article:
2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody
The deaths came as the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement, detaining a record number of people
More details in main article. Guardian Article:
The average age of the dead detainees is 46.8 years.
This is more than 30 years below the typical age of death for white Americans and about 35 years below the typical age of death of Latinx Americans.
NOTICE HOW MANY of the people listed below died during untreated or under-treated MEDICAL EMERGENCIES. This is shocking and must be the result of medical neglect.
Google explains that medical neglect is a violation of the 8th amendment of the Us Constitution, which applies to every PERSON on the country:
The legal term for medical neglect that causes death in a detention setting (jail, prison, or immigration detention) is deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.
Medical neglect on this class is a criminal act, could be charged like manslaughter and other violent crimes in usual cases.
Medical neglect is a violation of the Eighth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution (or the Fourteenth Amendment for pre-trial detainees), which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
23 January
Genry Ruiz Guillén, 29, of Honduras, died in a hospital in Hialeah, Florida.
Guillén had come to the United States from Honduras in 2023. He worked in construction.
In October 2024, he was apprehended by local law enforcement, and then transferred to the Krome immigrant detention center in South Florida. His mother told Univision that in December, Guillén called her from detention and told her he wasn’t feeling well, and that he was experiencing fainting spells. It was the last time she spoke with him, she said.
29 January
Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, 45, of Ethiopia, died at a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.
Medical emergency.
20 February
Maksym Chernyak, a Ukrainian citizen, died of an apparent stroke at a hospital in Miami.
Chernyak, 44, fled Kyiv with his long term-partner during the Russia-Ukraine war and came to the US on humanitarian parole, according to the Miami Herald.
23 February
Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez, 44, of the Dominican Republic, died at the Centro Medico hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
He was taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection air marine operations two days prior to his death, according to ICE.
8 April
Brayan Garzón-Rayo, 27, of Colombia, died at the Phelps county jail in Rolla, Missouri. Apparent Suicide?
16 April
Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, 55, died at a hospital in El Paso, Texas.
He was apprehended in February in Albuquerque, according to his family’s lawyer, Tin Nguyen, and his partner and friends couldn’t locate him for days. Eventually, they realised he was being held at the El Paso processing center in Texas. Tin Nguyen said that Nhon Ngoc had been showing early signs of dementia and possible side effects from a head injury prior to his detention.
25 April
Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old citizen of Haiti, died at the Broward transitional center in Pompano Beach, Florida.
MEdical care was refused by ICE. "when she asked the detention staff to see a physician, they refused her,” her son told investigators, according to WLRN Public Media.
5 May
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado.
7 June
Jesus Molina-Veya, a 45-year-old citizen of Mexico, died at the Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
23 June
Johnny Noviello was found unresponsive at the Bureau of Prisons’ federal detention center in Miami.
26 June
Isidro Pérez, 75, of Cuba died at a Florida hospital of undetermined causes.
According to the Miami Herald, Pérez was a mechanic and fisher from Cuba, and arrived in the US in 1966 at the age of 16.
19 July
Tien Xuan Phan, 55, died at the Methodist hospital north-east in Live Oak, Texas.
5 August
Chaofeng Ge.
Chaofeng Ge, 32, of China, died four days after entering ICE custody in Pennsylvania.
31 August
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, 32, died after he was detained at the Central Arizona Florence correctional complex.
Known as “Lenchito” by friends and family, Batrez Vargas was a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipient who was brought to the US from Mexico as a five-year-old.
8 September
Oscar Rascon Duarte, of Mexico, died at a long-term medical facility while in ICE custody.
Duarte, 58, had first come to the US in 1976, was deported in 2004 and then re-entered via the southern border. He served a 20-year sentence in prison for attempted sexual contact with a minor and child molestation. After he completed his sentence, he was transferred to ICE custody.
18 September
Santos Banegas Reyes, 42, of Honduras, died at the Nassau county correctional center in New York.
He was a construction worker and a father of two daughters, one of whom lives in the US while the other lives in Honduras, according to local news reports.
He was apprehended on 17 September by federal immigration agents just hours before he was found “not breathing” in his cell at the Nassau county correctional center. According to ICE, the preliminary cause of death appeared to be liver failure complicated by alcoholism. His family is contesting his cause of death, and have requested an independent autopsy.
22 September
Ismael Ayala Uribe.
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, died after falling ill at the Adelanto detention center in California.
His mother, Lucía Uribe, told the Guardian that Ismael had come to the US from Mexico when he was five, crossing the US southern border along with his sister and cousin to join his mother and father. The family settled in Westminster, California, and later moved to Huntington Beach.
24 September
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes.
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, 37, of El Salvador, was killed when a gunman opened fire at the ICE field office where he was being held.
He is survived by his partner, Berenice Prieto, and four children.
29 September
Miguel Ángel García Medina.
Miguel Ángel García Medina, 31, of Mexico, was killed outside an ICE field office in Dallas.
García Medina is survived by his wife, Stephany Gauffeny, two stepdaughters and a son – who was born three days after his death – his mother and grandparents, who live in Mexico, and three siblings.
29 September
Huabing Xie, of China, 53, died at El Centro regional medical center in Calexico, California.
4 October
Leo Cruz-Silva, a 34-year-old man from Mexico, died while detained by ICE at the Ste Genevieve county jail in Missouri.
A few days before he died, he was detained by police in Festus, Missouri, for public intoxication, according to federal immigration officials. The police then handed him over to ICE, which served him with a notice that the agency would reinstate a previous deportation order. Cruz-Silva had likely entered the US before 2010, when he was a child, according to immigration officials, and was expelled twice after re-entering via the southern border.
11 October
Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh, 67, died after being detained at the Krome detention center in south-west Miami-Dade county.
Saleh, who was from Jordan, first came to the US in 1994 and became a lawful permanent resident a few months after he arrived in the country.
23 October
Josué Castro Rivera, a 25-year-old man from Honduras, was killed while trying to flee ICE agents in Virginia.
He had been on his way to a gardening job when ICE agents pulled over his vehicle, his brother, Henry Castro, told reporters. When agents tried to detain Castro Rivera and three other passengers, he fled, running into traffic. He was struck while crossing Interstate 264 in Norfolk.
23 October
Gabriel Garcia Aviles, a 54-year-old from Mexico who had been living in the US for 30 years, died about a week after being detained by immigration agents.
Aviles was a father of two and grandfather of three, according to his family. His daughter, Mariel, told LA Taco she used to speak with him every day, and described him as someone who was “always happy and loved bikes”.
Customs and Border Protection agents grabbed him during a “roving patrol” in the southern California city of Costa Mesa on 14 October. Mariel last spoke with him shortly after he was apprehended, she told LA Taco. In the days that followed, his family tried repeatedly to contact him, but said that officers at the Adelanto detention facility refused to connect them.
25 October
Kai Yin Wong, 63, of China, died at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
3 December
Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a 48-year-old man from Guatemala, died at an El Paso hospital due to suspected kidney and liver failure, according to ICE.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Lucía Pedro Juan, and their four daughters. The couple had run a plant nursery outside Miami for a decade, and Pedro Juan has described him as a hard-working husband who fought to provide for their family.
According to an interview Pedro Juan gave to the El Paso Times, the couple had gone on a grocery run during the Labor Day holiday when they were pulled over by a highway patrol officer who asked to see their identification papers, and then turned them over to ICE; they were eventually separated by immigration officers. “I hugged him, I tickled him on his ribs and I gave him a kiss on his cheek,” she said of their goodbye. “I never saw him again.” Pedro Juan was detained for three months and later deported to Guatemala.
Gaspar-Andrés ended up at Camp East Montana, a detention facility at the Texas military base known as Fort Bliss. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the facility a “human and civil rights catastrophe” following several reports of injuries, illnesses and abuses.
Gaspar-Andrés was repeatedly seen by medical staff for symptoms including bleeding gums, sore throat and body aches, fever, jaundice and hypertension. He was transferred to a hospital on 16 November, where he was diagnosed with hyponatremia. He was later placed on dialysis and palliative care, before he died in December, according to ICE.
His wife told the El Paso Times that Gaspar-Andrés had been relatively healthy prior to his detention, and disputed ICE’s assertion that he had hypertension or other underlying conditions.
5 December
Pete Sumalo Montejo, 72, died at the Valley Baptist medical center in Harlingen.
6 December
Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, 48, of Pakistan, died at a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.
12 December
Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old man from Haiti, died at the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, one day after he was taken into custody.
14 December
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, 46, of Eritrea died of “medical distress”, according to the agency.
According to court documents obtained by the Daily Voice, Abdulkadir filed for an emergency federal motion for medical relief three days before he died.
14 December
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, 39, of Nicaragua died after months of detention at the Adams county correctional center in New Orleans.
15 December
Nenko Stanev Gantchev, 56, was born in Bulgaria and died at the North Lake processing center in Baldwin, Michigan.
Gantchev was “discovered unresponsive on the floor of his cell during routine checks”, and his official cause of death is still under investigation, according to ICE.
He had first arrived in the US in 1995.
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado, 68, died while in transit from a local jail to a federal detention center, the first detainee to die in this manner in at least a decade.