A 44-year-old citizen of Ukraine in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was pronounced dead by doctors at HCA Kendall Hospital in Miami, Florida, on February 20, 2025, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). A hospital physician reported the preliminary cause of death as bleeding from the brain.
The man entered the United States on August 24, 2024, in Miami as a Ukrainian Humanitarian Parolee with authorization to stay in the U.S. through August 23, 2026. He was in the US in lawful immigration status at the time these events took place.
ICE encountered him January 26, 2025, at the Broward County Jail in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, following his arrest for battery and they lodged an immigration detainer, which is a notice asking the local law enforcement agency to hold an individual in jail so they can come take them into federal custody later. Broward County Jail released the man into the custody of ICE on February 2, 2025, and he was transported to the Krome Service and Processing Center. Miami Dade Fire Rescue transported the man to the HCA Kendall Hospital due to vomiting and seizure activity on February 18, 2025. Hospital medical staff found him in an unresponsive state and conducted a CT scan of the brain which revealed bleeding. He died two days later.
they were trapped in a punitive system indefinitely, with no accountability for the officials running it.
No further explanation is provided as to how the Ukrainian national developed a brain bleed during the 16 days he spent in ICE custody. There is no mention of him being injured while in State custody or at any point prior to his being brought to the hospital on February 18th.
2024 saw a troubling rise in deaths of people in ICE custody with it more than doubling from the year prior according to ICE data. NBC News wrote a story covering this early in January of 2024, noting that there were more deaths in ICE custody in the first quarter of that fiscal year than during the height of the COVID pandemic.
This is certainly something people should be paying attention to now that Trump has started his mass deportations and opened Guantanamo Bay as a black-ops terrorist torture facility where the most dangerous enemies of the state are disappeared an immigration detention facility. The nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project said in a report last year that people are held in “prison-like” conditions. It said they were “trapped in a punitive system” indefinitely, with no accountability for the officials running it.
During Trump’s first term deaths in ICE custody soured with 24 immigrants having died in ICE custody by 2019. At least four other immigrants died within days of being released from ICE custody. Those numbers do not include all the immigrants who died in the custody of other federal agencies enforcing immigration laws like those by the border. That year five immigrant children died while in the custody of another federal agency.
A 54-year-old immigrant from Mexico died after being locked in a solitary confinement cell for days. A 21-year-old man from India hanged himself in an Arizona jail cell. A 25-year-old asylum seeker died in a hospital days after being brought there after taking ill.
For the first time ever, immigrants are being shipped to Guantanamo from the United States and denied access to lawyers. This unprecedented move is shocking and should worry everyone who thinks of the United States as a country guided by the rule of law.”
That year an ICE supervisor warned that the ICE Health Service Corps, was “severely dysfunctional” and that “preventable harm and death to detainees has occurred,” according to an internal memo reported on by Young Turks.
It seems unlikely things will be better under the mess created by Trump this time around. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department are racing to set up tents at Guantanamo Bay, to house thousands of migrants, but those involved say that it is chaos. CNN reported a quote from someone with knowledge of the efforts, “Nobody really knows what’s going on, between DOD, ICE, and CBP. We’ve got everybody pointing fingers, saying, ‘They’re in charge,’ ‘They’re paying for this,’ ‘They’re providing security.’ No one actually knows.”
They added, “No one’s really too concerned or worried about it now, because it’s gang members from Venezuela going to Guantanamo, and the average American is probably fine with that. But once we start blurring that line, it just gets dangerous.”
ICE officials consistently claim that deaths in their custody are “exceedingly rare” but you can see the deaths for yourself on their website. The website, of course, only lists the deaths ICE reports and is only updated when they get around to it. The death of the Ukrainian man on February 20, 2025, still hasn’t been added to the list of deaths in ICE custody for 2025, which currently only shows four other deaths. What we do know for sure is that there were at least three deaths in ICE custody so far since Trump started his second term.
A 45-year-old man with no criminal record was taken into ICE custody with a clean bill of health and died six months later. A 29-year-old young man who spent a year and a half in ICE custody died of a heart attack after suddenly taking ill.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt was quoted saying, “For the first time ever, immigrants are being shipped to Guantanamo from the United States and denied access to lawyers. This unprecedented move is shocking and should worry everyone who thinks of the United States as a country guided by the rule of law.”