A Mexican citizen died in a South Texas hospital while he was being held pending deportation, US immigration authorities reported Monday.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) identified the man as Ramiro Hernández Ibarra, 42, and detailed that he died Saturday after being hospitalized on Thursday. The ICE noted that Hernández has been preliminarily considered to have died of complications related to septic shock, although he did not offer further details.
Hernández is the 10th person to die in ICE custody since October, the start of the US government’s fiscal year. Eight people died in the previous fiscal year.
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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, immigrant rights advocates have criticized ICE’s medical care for people it detains and demanded the release of part of the more than 37,000 detainees. Approximately 47% of those people are detained for non-criminal violations of immigration laws, according to the latest agency statistics.
Until last week, ICE had not confirmed any cases of COVID-19 at its facilities. The agency has been monitoring sick detainees and others in quarantine at several of its detention centers, including about 60 people confined to a dormitory at the Pine Prairie, a rural area of Louisiana, according to a lawyer who He has spoken to people detained there.
Hernández Ibarra had repeatedly crossed the border between Mexico and the United States and voluntarily returned to Mexico eight times. The most recent time he was detained by ICE was in December after being arrested and incarcerated for domestic violence at the Hidalgo County Jail.
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