A Nicaraguan man who died Friday at an Arizona hospital is the 12th person to die in the custody of US immigration authorities since September.
Three dozen people from Central America, including the 52-year-old man, had turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents west of Sasabe, US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. They were being processed at a Border Patrol facility in Tucson when he fell into medical distress.
CBP expressed its condolences to the man’s family.
Eleven others have died in US custody, including a 30-year-old Honduran man who died in ICE custody last Sunday at a hospital in Humble, Texas, the agency said.
Yimi Alexis Balderramos-Torres entered ICE custody on June 6 and less than two weeks later was transferred to the Houston Contract Detention Facility in Houston, Texas.
On June 30, he was found unresponsive in his dormitory and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful, ICE said.
Other detainees to die in ICE custody since November include a 58-year-old Cuban man; twoRussiannationals, a 40-year-old man anda 56-year-old man; a 54-year-old Mexican man; and a 21-year-old Indiannational. A 25-year-old Salvadoran transgender woman, Jonathan Alberto “Johana” Medina Leon, died in the agency’s custody in early June.
Besides the 12 migrants who have died in US custody, a 2-year-old boy from Guatemala died in May at an El Paso hospital. The boy had suffered from complications of pneumonia and was not identified and not in US custody at the time of his death, Tekandi Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul general in Del Rio, Texas, told CNN. He had previously been in US custody.
