Another Immigrant Has Died In ICE Custody. She’s The Eighth Since October.
Hamed Aleaziz for BuzzFeed reports on a disturbing immigrant detention. A 22-year-old Guatemalan woman who passed her initial asylum screening and was in detention died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Sunday. The death is the eighth in ICE custody in the 2020 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, and equals the number of deaths for the entire 2019 fiscal year.
ICE said the cause of death was “autoimmune hepatitis, complicated by septic shock and acute liver failure.” Maria Celeste Ochoa Yoc de Ramirez had been detained at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The woman had been arrested by Border Patrol officials in early September after crossing into Texas without authorization. A few weeks later, asylum officers determined that she had passed a “credible fear” screening and established a significant possibility that she ha a valid fear of persecution or torture in Guatemala. It’s the first step in a long process to gain relief in the United States.
On February 7, Ochoa Yoc de Ramirez was taken from detention to a hospital in Oklahoma, where she was admitted. Two days later, she had her gall bladder surgically removed. She was returned to a detention center in Oklahoma, then taken to the detention facility in Texas. On February 18, officials took her to a hospital in Texas for treatment for abdominal pain. She remained in the hospital until she was pronounced dead.
The quality of the health care for immigrants in detention has been questioned and criticized. Last December, the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced it opened an investigation into the medical care of immigrant detainees in the wake of a BuzzFeed News story that revealed a series of allegations of substandard care from a whistleblower.
BuzzFeed News first reported the memo and documented how it contained reports of detainees being given incorrect medication and suffering from delays in treating withdrawal symptoms, as well as one who was allowed to become so mentally unstable he lacerated his own penis and required surgery.
KJ