The number of deaths in ICE custody is already more than double all of last year

gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 394 points –
The number of deaths in ICE custody is already more than double all of last year
nbcnews.com
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The article suggests that the issues occur most in private detention centers, and argues that ill detainees should be relocated to healthcare facilities. Private detention centers most certainly should be abolished, and not just for ICE detainees.

The article also states they have been 10 deaths in FY 2024 according to ICE.gov, however the website only shows 6. I’m guessing the website is not updated, but the article only identifies two deaths since January, making the total 8. I haven’t found information on the other two deaths reported elsewhere.

Here are the number of deaths by fiscal year from ICE.gov:

FY 2024 - 6 (10 reported by NBC)

FY 2023 - 4

FY 2022 - 3

FY 2021 - 5

FY 2020 - 21

FY 2019 - 8

FY 2018 - 6

www.ice.gov/detain/detainee-death-reporting

Thank you for posting the actual numbers. This article is pretty shitty imo. I read it just to see if they even included them (I guess, to their credit, at least they did that).

4,3,5 and 10(even though the govt is reporting 6) over the last 4 years.

So even assuming 10 is correct, using the "more than doubled" almost seems like journalistic malpractice. At best it's click-bait garbage. Where was the "ICE sees 25% drop in in-custody deaths" article a few years ago?

Should we watch it to see if it's a broader trend? Yea, probably. Is this necessarily indicative of anything nefarious? No.

There could be (and likely are) legitimate reasons for the increase that have nothing to do with "ICE bad". Like maybe, people coming in already sick, maybe an older demographic, unvaccinated people, etc etc. or literally just random fucking chance.

Why are we keeping them in such poor conditions if they're already sick? Why aren't they in hospitals?

"in custody deaths" means deaths while under the supervision of ICE. That could be detained at an ICE facility or in a hospital "while being detained".

If you got arrested by your local police for something and were in jail, but got sick so they send you to the hospital (with a cop escort usually)...then you died there. That counts as "in custody".

So don't conflate in-custody with "not being sent to hospitals".

Oh I'm not conflating anything. Between the immigration advocates and the government agency caught committing human rights abuses I'm going to believe the immigration advocates. They don't send them to hospitals.

The article states there are on-site medical practitioners and facilities. I think they’re suggesting there’s no practice in place if a detainee needs advanced medical care.

A national guard army medic with their go pack is not adequate facilities.

“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” the agency said in the statement, as well as in previous statements following detainee deaths. “All people in ICE custody receive medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. At no time during detention is a detained noncitizen denied emergent care.”

Again, it’s about them not having access to advanced medical care. If a detainee needs an MRI, CT, colonoscopy, etc. there is no practice in place for relocation to a medical facility.

And I'm saying the guys known for spraying detainees with so much pesticide they were bleeding from their orifices aren't going to tell you they don't give anyone any actual medical care. They have an army medic that gets 5 minutes to look at them through the bars. And that's only when they get one assigned to them.

Do you have a source? I haven’t seen anything like that and I’d like to read more about it.

Here's an article about their use of pesticide.

Here's an article about the medical care conditions.

Of note, "take Motrin and drink water", is a bit of dark humor you find in the Army because care can be hard to access in the field and the mission often takes priority. It's not supposed to be actual medical advice.

Biden should be shutting these places down. Instead he's about to feed them even more people.

That’s horrific.

Plaintiffs say they found blood in their mouths and saliva, suffered from debilitating headaches, felt dizzy and lightheaded, and now deal with long-term chronic health issues as a result of their exposure to the chemical.

The atrocity below unsurprisingly happened under Trump’s Title 42 criminal oppression.

Last week, a nurse at a privately run immigration-detention facility in Irwin County, Georgia, filed a whistle-blower complaint alleging that women at the facility were undergoing hysterectomies without their informed consent.

So we can add forced sterilization to the list of horrors like physically and sexually abusing hundreds of children. The only thing more insane than Trump enacting it, was the Supreme Court blocking Biden’s attempt to end it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/27/supreme-court-blocks-lifting-of-title-42-border-policy-00075650

The thing is, that system hasn't been reformed. Nobody got fired, no contracts got cancelled. This is also the day to day under Biden, just with a little less pesticide.

He terminated contracts with detention centers and ICE departments that have problematic track records, as well as discharged problem employees, upon entering office. He then tried to repeal Title 42, and was stalled by SCOTUS. After that, his open border policy needed little detention. Only now that he’s detaining at the request of sanctuary cities are these numbers rising again.

https://www.aclum.org/en/press-releases/aclu-statement-biden-administration-terminating-bristol-county-ice-agreements

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The numbers are interesting and I bet the 2020 number is very high because of covid, but them comparing total deaths might be statistical deception.

How old were the people who died? What were the causes of death? Did the total amount of people in detention stay consistent over time?

According to the article, a few of the ones listed are pretty young, but they didn't show causes of death.

Looks like they went on a killing spree at the end of donalds term. Assuming this was about the time they were shredding documents, email, and texts illegally? Not surprising considering ice acted as donalds personal death squad.

Definitely nothing else that increased mortality happened in 2020 right?

Which is also something the president had control to protect prisoners from.

But instead went, "It's gonna go big in cities, kill lots of democrats, let it run loose!"

Then that plan backfired and it went rampant in republican areas as democrats masked up and got vaccinated..

The president at the time made zero effort to do anything other than hide behind a curtain and go, "The virus isn't real! Trust me I tell the truth!", then spent months saying insane things with no evidence to substantiate any of it. Tens of thousands of rural citizens trusted him and died following his advice.

One final note, this was less than a few years after dismantling and defunding Obama's virus response task force which had been assembled so that the US would be prepared for virulant events.

Yes but also ICE decided to go half way to the Nazi solution and sprayed detainees with pesticide so much they caused health problems. (The holocaust gas chamber were a very high dose of pesticide.)

Disinfectant ≠ pesticide

Obviously every COVID policy everywhere is heavily criticized after the fact by someone, but that likely saved lives.

I'm aware that not all disinfectant is pesticide. I'm also aware that they exposed detainees to pesticide in the name of COVID prevention.

Link

It was probably mostly covid with some Title 42 mixed in, considering the previous numbers were on the higher side as well.

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Trump's next rally:

"I can do better!"

Crazy thought, but maybe it's not the President in charge. Maybe it's the record high heat and the deplorable conditions of confinement.

Maybe we shouldn't be holding these people in concentration camps to begin with.

Maybe the president should have tackled the bad conditions in ICE detainment like he promised? He promised a more fair and humane system after Trump's abuses of detainees and instead he's treated Trump's conditions as a record to beat.

Maybe the president should have tackled the bad conditions in ICE detainment like he promised?

Sounds like pie-in-the-sky leftist agitprop to me.

He promised a more fair and humane system after Trump’s abuses of detainees and instead he’s treated Trump’s conditions as a record to beat.

Everyone knows that a Democratic President doesn't have the same authority as a Republican President.

So fun fact. On my phone I have you tagged as sarcastic. But on my computer I haven't figured out how to tag people yet.

But yes.

ICE is controlled by the department of Homeland Security, which is under the executive branch. As we remember from civics class, the president is directly responsible for the executive branch. The president is responsible for the atrocities at the border.

Are you telling me that the current President - Joe Biden - is responsible for a rising tide of migrants dying from heat exposure in ICE detainment centers?

You'd think that would make Republicans like Biden...

Yeah, sorry, four years of Trump vs. four years of Biden should really have put to rest the idea that both parties are the same, even if they sometimes support the same bad policies.

I mean to be fair the Democrats trotted out an obscenely draconian immigration bill that was basically every Republicans wet dream about the border and the only reason it didn't pass was because it included Ukraine funding and the Republicans didn't want to give Biden a win.

Call me crazy, but giving the Republicans everything they want just to gain small concessions is bonkers and makes it seem like Democrats really don't have that much of a problem with horrific policies that Republicans want.

The Democrats leaned on DREAMers for like a decade and were going to fucking throw them under the bus with that border bill in a way that screamed "Political capital is used up, fuck them DREAMers!"

They are not the same but Democrats spend way too much time trying to make deals with people who only want to hurt them and others so they can be seen "reaching across the aisle."

I'm pretty sure they did that knowing the Republicans would reject it. It was political brinksmanship.

The Senate Democrats also reintroduced the bill on its own, and let the Republicans vote against it. This was absolutely a political move on their part, letting the GOP tear itself apart arguing about whether they should've voted for or against it. They're taking advantage of the existing tensions and divisions within the party to weaken them.

and brinskmanship is a good thing? That's how you catch the car and end up the villain. It's the brinksmanship that Republicans played for a decade that led to Donald Trump getting elected. Do not make the mistake of thinking the Democrats are somehow immune to that effect.

It worked.

This time.

The best way party officials are spinning this is that he is expecting the courts to issue a stay right away and this run up is to give the ACLU enough warning to have the case ready to go.

This is just more brinksmanship.

And if they call his bluff, which leaning Conservative the courts just might, he's now got to either rescind the order in shame or deal with a Republican PR wet dream for the rest of the campaign season.

When you shut down the border based on numbers and automatically deny asylum to anyone who was too late it turns into a physical game at the border. The 2nd or 3rd time someone announces the border is back open everyone who wants asylum is going to run for it, creating huge crowds. The RNC is going to have cameras there and what do you think the headline is going to be? It's not going to be, "Biden Tough on Border". It's going to be stuff like, "Chaos at Border!", "Biden Loses Control", "Border States Deploy Armed National Guard"

Doubling down on the tactic doesn't make it not brinksmanship. And it does signal he has no problem abandoning his base.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-immigration-executive-order-asylum-border-7cd0b0f28e298036ad1fc6b0c78961e1

Is this political brinksmanship?


Fuck me, it's just like how Trump said "we need to stop testing for COVID" and then Biden never said it out loud, but he just stopped funding testing for COVID but didn't say the words "we need to stop testing for COVID." He just did it instead of saying it and somehow everyone was fine with it.

That is hardly giving the Republicans everything they want.

As I have already said- just because the parties can agree on some bad policies doesn't mean they are the same.

four years of Trump vs. four years of Biden should really have put to rest the idea that both parties are the same

Biden isn't on Twitter, so we can ignore the wars and the concentration camps and the Cop Cities and the deteriorating climate.

He picks different supreme court justices though and has some different head of agencies, though. That alone makes a big difference.

Dems had the opportunity to stop up the ACB nomination in 2020 the same way Repubs blocked Garland in 2016. In fact, it would have been easier. Feinstein only had to hold up the vote for three months compared to McConnell's twelve. Dems waved her through, the same way Joe Biden's Judiciary Committee waved through Clarence Thomas back in 1991, months before Bill Clinton took office.

Its not enough to say which Presidents are picking the nominees. The senatorial strategies are totally different. Republicans hold Dem nominees hostage while Dems rubber stamp whatever assholes the GOP cough up.

Had Dem Senators punted on Thomas and ACB when they had the opportunity, the SCOTUS of today would look totally different.

Since I didn't get a response from the other person, perhaps you could explain why Judge Jackson is the sort of SCOTUS justice Trump would have picked.

That's pretty strawman of you. Assuming he's operating in bad faith; how does appointing Judge Jackson stop the ratchet effect? That's what we're talking about here. I happen to think he's operating in good faith, just to his donors instead of his constituency. But the effect is the same, holding the status quo that the GOP sets. Why hasn't Mayorkas purged ICE in an attempt to reform it? Where are the wide ranging investigations of the human rights abuses that were so well reported during the Trump administration? Biden's goal was never to bring things back in line, it was to keep the lights on and keep the money flowing to the donors. Some of whom run private detention centers.

No, we were talking about how the two parties are exactly the same. If they are exactly the same, Trump would have the same reason for picking justice Jackson as Biden. So what is that reason?

I understand that's your straw man. But that's not what the other people in this thread are saying.

That is not my straw man, that is exactly the order of the conversation. I was told both parties are the same, I asked if that was true, what Trump's reason for picking Jackson would be.

No one has come up with an answer.

But one person has tried to argue with me in this thread that Harriet Miers was a feminist and sent me to some Christian website to prove it, so that was amusing.

You know we can just read the thread right?

Can you?

The ratchet effect isn't the same thing as saying they're the same. It's saying the Democrats have no interest and have taken no action in rolling back Republican abuses.

What does any of that have to do with Judge Jackson? Just explain why Judge Jackson is the sort of SCOTUS justice Trump would have picked since both parties are the same.

What does any of that have to do with Judge Jackson?

We would have more Judge Jacksons on the court if the Dem Senate had played hardball with Republican Presidents. And taking Thomas out of circulation in 1991 would have changed the Bush v Gore decision in 2000, which would have meant President Al Gore seating even more Judge Jacksons in his subsequent terms.

No Thomas means no Bush Jr. No Bush Jr means no gerrymandering greenlit by Ashcroft's DOJ. Which would have promised more state level liberal courts in places like Texas and Wisconsin (ie, more state court Judge Jacksons). Which would have curbed the rise of white nationalism following Obama's election in 2008. No GOP capture of Florida through mass disenfranchisement of black voters. No extended legacy of GOP rule in Georgia, for the same reasons. No War on Immigration in Arizona and Colorado and Texas, forcing those states farther and farther to the right. All of which would have precluded a Trump presidency in 2016.

No Trump means we don't have to worry about who he'd pick for SCOTUS.

That is still not an explanation for why judge Jackson would be the sort of SCOTUS judge Trump would pick if both parties are the same.

Its an explanation for why a judge approved by Joe Biden is going to give us another Trump presidency.

I didn't ask for that explanation.

If you aren't able to explain why Trump would pick a justice like Jackson when both parties are the same, just say so.

I didn’t ask for that explanation.

Because you don't want Joe Biden carrying any culpability for the current 6-3 Conservative Majority.

We've got multiple Republican SCOTUS nominees who took office on his watch. We know what that leads to, because we know the outcome of Bush v Gore. We know what eight years of Bush did to the country and how it led directly to the election of Trump.

So why would four more years of Biden - a man who gave us the courts that gave us Bush and Trump - produce a majority of Judge Jacksons? He appears far better at seating judges like Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito.

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How do you think we got here exactly?

An election nearly four years ago? What a strange question.

Now, please explain to me how Judge Jackson would be the same sort of justice Trump would have nominated to SCOTUS.

How come SCOTUS is so fucked exactly? Who could have done something to fix it in the forty plus years we've known this was an issue an didn't?

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I mean, what this actually says is there's been a year within the last five that was worse. Obviously nobody should be dying and frankly ICE should not exist and murica just needs to stop pretending it's so special since it's such shit to begin with, but "within the range of the last five years" is just a boring angle to write an article from.

5, 3, 4,then 10 deaths in the past four years including 2024, all inmates were given medical and dental, psychological support and there are two causes of death of in the article unknown, which is probably the most cause for concern.

I looked it up.

The two unknown are undergoing investigations now, standard practice in ICE to investigate cause of death

8 of the deaths since 2018 resulted from covid in at-risk populations, 9 from suicide, which I think is a little higher than the american average of 14 per 100,000 people, but some of these people left notes saying that if they might be sent back then they're going to kill themselves, so... More high stakes, more pressure in a lot of these situations obviously.

Most of the covid deaths were in high risk patients, the elderly or chronically ill with kidney issues or the like.

So basically, you just did more legwork than the journalist that published this article and there isn't a big story here. Maybe if those 2 deaths come back "omg aliens killed them" we'd have a story.

It looks like they just wanted to say double the deaths and hope somebody gasped.

Build The Wall Back Better, my harm reduction vote in action :')

All of North America should have freedom of movement and trade. We can make the border the Panama canal so things are nice and simple.

Of course it is. Democrats either do the right thing and appear soft on immigrants right before election l, or they do the wrong thing and these sick fucks get to have fun continuing to torture and kill people. It’s really. A win-win for them.

Hmm...I don't want to read the article, but I'm pretty sure it's not Internal Combustion Engine...

From context, it seems like it must be... Immigrant Containment Encampments?

In-Car Entertainment if I remember correctly