A blind detainee walks with an immigrant to an ICE detention center.
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A 70-year-old Costa Rican died Monday in police custody at a Georgia hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, according to a well-informed source, making him the third inmate to die in a week.
The guy had been detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, the same one where another detainee, Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, 34, had been arrested through ICE before he died in May after he also tested positive for coronavirus.
ICE officials showed that a 70-year-old Costa Rican died monday in government custody at a hospital, but revealed additional details. The guy is the eighteenth inmate who died in police custody in fiscal 2020, which ends on September 30.
The total number of deaths through ICE so far this fiscal year is the total since 2006, when 19 immigrants died, according to ICE records.
Medical experts and immigrant advocates have warned that the highly contagious COVID-19 puts all detainees at risk. But for older inmates in ICE’s custody, the disorder inherent in prisons, the lack of an area to adapt to appropriate rules of social estrangement, put them even more at risk, they say.
Defenders have used those arguments as a boost to get more versions.
As of August 10, more than 1,000 ICE prisoners had tested positive for COVID-19. And more than 4,000 people contracted the disease while in detention.
So far, the number of deaths in police custody is more than double that of last year, despite a significant decline in the population of detained immigrants.
Last fall, there were more than 55,000 people in police custody a day. As of August 1, that number had fallen to around 21,500 according to the day.
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