At least two more detained immigrants have died in ICE custody: Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres (42) and Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz (68), both from Honduras.

Núñez died on Jan. 5 of congestive heart failure in intensive care in a hospital in Conroe, TX.

Beltrán died the following morning at a hospital in Indio, CA, also due to heart-related complications. He had repeatedly applied for temporary protected status (TPS) between 1999 and 2012, but was denied each time.

ICE hasn’t offered much more info than that. Their public reporting mostly emphasizes their “illegal” status while talking up how much the agency does for the health of the people in its custody. So there’s not really any info about whether or not their detention contributed to their deaths: stress, lack of access to medications, and/or other factors may well have played a role, but who’s to say when there’s no accountability?

It’s worth noting that both were awaiting deportation to Honduras, where just in the past few months the Trump administration has interfered with presidential elections and helped install another compliant, far-right authoritarian leader. So these detainees were scheduled to be sent back to a place that has again been destabilized through US intervention, thus making both decent work and free expression harder to find, thus creating more incentive for people to seek refuge elsewhere.

Not unrelated: when Telemundo asked ICE for figures on how many people have died in their custody in the past year, ICE responded in part by saying that “For a lot of illegal immigrants, this is the best health care they’ve had in their entire lives” (that’s a back translation from the Spanish posted by Telemundo, so the exact wording might be slightly off). Cool story.

Reposting from original on Mastodon