Families, advocates and lawmakers say poor care, opaque investigations and bureaucracy leave deaths unexplained
The circumstances of many of the record number of deaths in US immigration custody under the second Trump administration have left loved ones often searching in vain for answers amid a lack of transparency over key investigations.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports mandated by Congress, autopsy reports and 911 calls collected by the Guardian raise questions about the quality of medical care, allegedly inadequate or haphazard responses to emergencies, and contraction of diseases and infections inside detention facilities that in some cases contributed to detainee deaths.
Families and their attorneys, as well as immigration advocates and Democratic elected officials have struggled to navigate a bureaucratic labyrinth of multiple federal agencies, local medical examiners and coroners, walled-off detention facilities, and, in some cases, local law enforcement, to obtain answers about the many deaths.
Just in the last week, Afghan asylum seeker Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, 41, who had worked with US special forces in military operations in his home country, died in ICE custody in Texas, and then 19-year-old Royer Perez-Jimenez, from Mexico, died in what ICE has called a “presumed suicide” at a facility in Florida. He became the youngest to die in ICE custody since Donald Trump returned to the White House and it brought the figure of known deaths in ICE custody during this administration to 42.
