This Week in ICE Terror: Abductions, Inhumanity, Laws, and Resistance
A roundup of ICE-related news from this week.
Emmanuel Damas died while in ICE custody in Arizona after not receiving medical attention for severe tooth pain.
Emmanuel Damas, a 56-year-old Haitian man living in Massachusetts and seeking asylum, died in federal immigration detention this week from an untreated tooth infection.
Damas was transferred to the medium-security Florence Correctional Center in Arizona after he was detained and was held there for several months. In mid-February, he told personnel at the facility that he had a toothache, but he was not sent to a dentist, his brother, Presly Nelson, said. Damas died Monday at an area hospital.
A review of 911 calls from a Texas ICE detention facility revealed overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition, and emotional distress.
Data and recordings from more than a hundred 911 calls at the Camp East Montana detention facility on the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, Texas, along with interviews and court filings obtained by AP News revealed a disturbing reality of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition, and emotional distress.
The AP investigation found:
After its opening last August, staff at the camp made nearly one 911 call per day in its first five months of operation.
In one call, a doctor says a man is banging his head against the wall while expressing suicidal thoughts. In another, a nurse says a pregnant woman is in severe pain and has COVID.
Injured individuals being detained ranged from a 19-year-old man who fell out of a bunk bed, to a 79-year-old man struggling to breathe. At least 20 emergencies were reported as seizures, including some that resulted in serious head trauma.
The calls revealed that those being detained have repeatedly tried to harm themselves.
Camp East Montana, one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the U.S., has reported 14 confirmed measles infections.
At least 14 people detained at Camp East Montana, located on the Fort Bliss Army base, tested positive for measles this week and are currently being quarantined. As many as 1,500 people are being detained in the facility, according to recent reports.
This marks the third known measles outbreak at an ICE detention facility so far this year.
The family of Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, who died while in ICE custody last month, says he was denied medical care.
Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, 48, died while in ICE custody in Victorville, California in February, where he had been held for over a month.
Gutiérrez Reyes’s wife, Patricia Martínez Hernandez, told the Los Angeles Times that her husband had asked for medical care that went unreceived: “He told me he had a fever… that he was filling out paper after paper so they would take him to the doctor. ‘Let’s see if they’ll take me,’ he told me that night,” she said.
Los Angeles city council member Eunisses Hernandez has also said that Gutiérrez Reyes was denied medical care by ICE.
According to Martínez Hernandez, her husband suffered from diabetes and high cholesterol, which she said were left untreated.
Oregon lawmakers approved a measure to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks.
Lawmakers in Oregon this week voted to pass House Bill 4138, which will require officers to clearly display their name or identifying number, their agency and their badge. The bill also limits the use of facial coverings that conceal a person’s identity.
If the bill is signed by Governor Tina Kotek, it would apply to all law enforcement operating in Oregon at the local, state and federal authority.
The Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is installing emergency sirens to warn of ICE raids.
For the last several weeks, activists have been installing sirens across the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles with the goal of getting people off the streets and indoors to safety to avoid being detained by ICE agents.
Flyers have been posted throughout the neighborhood explaining the sirens: “When alarm goes off, ICE is in the community,” the flyers read in both English and Spanish. “Get off the streets, take shelter and lock down.”
There are currently about 20 sirens, which are activated via a mobile app, throughout the neighborhood.
Estefany Rodriguez, a journalist who covers immigration-related news for Nashville Noticias and Univision 42, was taken into custody by ICE agents in Nashville on Wednesday.
According to a statement from the station, Rodriguez was with her husband outside a gym when several vehicles surrounded their marked news car. The station said that several men stepped out of those vehicles and demanded that Rodriguez be taken into custody. She was later transported to an ICE detention center.
Rodriguez’s lawyer said there had been no formal immigration case filed against her until now. Her attorneys said that Rodriguez entered the U.S. on a tourist visa, later applied for asylum, and has been seeking a green card through her U.S. citizen husband. They said she had been cooperating with immigration officials and was expected to report to the ICE office later this month. Because of that, the lawsuit claims the arrest violated Rodriguez’s Fourth Amendment rights. Her attorneys have filed an emergency petition asking a judge to order her release.
A bill advancing in Tennessee would allow ICE agent identities to be confidential from public records requests.
Senate Bill 1464, introduced by state Senator Jack Johnson, would make the names and addresses of officers involved in immigration enforcement confidential and shield any documents related to future operations from public records requests.
Under the bill, if a state employee were to release that information, they could be charged with a felony.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Johnson, said that the internet has changed how law enforcement interacts with the public, and his bill is intended to “protect officers from being doxed.”