Progressive Politics

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49515543

Another person has died in federal immigration custody this week in Georgia, officials announced on Wednesday. His is the 22nd death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody this year.

Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man, died on Monday morning while being transferred between detention facilities in Georgia. In a press release, ICE said Arenas-Silva was arrested last Thursday and had been detained at the Irwin county detention center, a privately run facility in Georgia. He was being transferred to another ICE facility, the Folkston ICE processing center, when he was found “unresponsive” in a transport bus. ICE said the “suspected” cause of death was cardiac arrest.

Arenas-Silva’s sister and immigrants’ rights groups in Georgia said in a press statement that ICE did not provide him with necessary medications during his time in detention for an unnamed condition he was dealing with, despite his family’s pleas that he take the medications during his arrest last week.

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When Arenas-Silva was detained at his house last Thursday, ICE at first “ignored” his family’s request for him to take his medication with him, and then only allowed him to take one medication, the Georgia immigrants’ rights groups said in their press release. He later called his sister while in ICE detention and told her officials did not give him the medication he needed.

After he was found unresponsive on the transport bus, while en route to the Folkston facility, staff called for medical assistance and transported him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

“I am 100% certain that he did not receive proper care,” Arenas-Silva’s sister, who is unnamed in the press statement, said. “I deeply mourn his passing in such a cruel manner; that is why I will seek justice for him and for everyone else who goes through this, so that other families do not have to endure what we are going through. No one should go through this.”

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The Irwin county detention center, where he had been held, began detaining immigrants again last year. The facility’s contract with ICE had been terminated in 2021 by the Biden administration, after a nurse working at the facility blew the whistle on alleged medical abuse. In 2020, the facility became known for allegations that women detained were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures.

A Senate subcommittee on investigations investigation and report found in 2022 that “female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures”.

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Arenas-Silva’s family is demanding an independent investigation into his death. His death comes after the late June death of Adrian Andreas Florian, an 85-year-old German man, who died in a hospital in ICE custody after being detained in Texas.

The DHS has increased its detention capacity and numbers since the second Trump administration entered office last year. A record number of people have died in ICE custody since January 2025. In 2025, ICE reported 33 detainee deaths, the highest total in more than two decades.

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Deaths in ICE custody have prompted international concern. In late June, Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, raised the alarm about deaths in US government immigration custody and called for “prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations”.