ICE detainee dies in Columbus hospital from COVID-19 complications
A man in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody died at Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital from coronavirus complications Sunday.
The man, 34-year-old Santiago Baten-Oxlaj of Guatemala, was held at Stewart Detention Center in nearby Lumpkin, Georgia, and had been in the hospital since April 17, agency officials said in a news release.
He is the second of the agency’s detainees to be killed by the disease, CBS News reports.
ICE arrested Baten-Oxlaj in Marietta, Georgia, in early March following a conviction for driving under the influence, and a federal judge allowed Baten-Oxlaj to voluntarily leave the U.S. on March 26. He was awaiting departure from the country at the time of his death, ICE officials said in a news release.
BuzzFeed News was the first to report on Baten-Oxlaj’s death. The primary cause of death is listed as “complications related to COVID-19.”
“ICE is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody and is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident, as it does in all such cases,” agency officials said in a news release.
As of last week 1,201 ICE detainees, 44 ICE detention center employees and 116 other ICE employees across the country have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. ICE currently has 26,660 detainees, and the agency has tested 2,394 of them for COVID-19, according to an agency website.
CBS reports ICE has released more than 900 immigrants due to age or health issues that would put them at risk of severe illness if they contracted COVID-19. Lawsuits filed by other groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have resulted in the agency being required to release more than 370 additional immigrants.
Stewart Detention Center is privately-run by CoreCivic and is one of the largest in the nation.
Earlier this month, WNYC and The Intercept cited court documents stating that 44 CoreCivic staff members at the facility tested positive for COVID-19 by the end of April. They are separate from staff hired by ICE at the facility.
Court documents from an April 9 lawsuit against ICE and Stewart filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center stated that at least 30 additional detainees were presumptive positive cases, reports The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
ICE reports than 16 detainees and 2 ICE employees at the facility have tested positive for the novel coronavirus as of last week.
As of Monday, 51 CoreCivic employees who work at the Stewart Detention Center have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Of those, 38 have recovered and been cleared to return to work. The remaining employees are at home recovering, said CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin.
“We’re working closely with our partners at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ensure the health and safety of everyone at the Stewart Detention Center,” he said. “In addition to the steps we put in place several weeks ago, we’ve updated and expanded our response to COVID-19 at the facility.”
Some of these updates at Stewart include:
- Conducting daily temperature checks of all detainees.
- Implementing deep weekly cleaning procedures for all of the housing units.
- Limiting movement around the facility, with the exception of court hearings or medical emergencies.
- Grouping housing pods with positive cases.
- Serving meals in the housing pods rather than the dining facility.
- Providing masks to all staff and detainees.
“This is an awful tragedy,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director of Project South, a social justice nonprofit organization based in Atlanta. “We have been calling on the government for months to free detained immigrants from these horrid corporate-run prisons which have a deadly track record. ICE has a responsibility to free all detained people before we see an even larger catastrophe.”
This story was originally published May 25, 2020 at 5:01 PM.