U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday that a second illegal immigrant detainee has died while in custody in the last few weeks.
The news of the passing of the Honduran immigrant, who was in ICE’s custody and pending removal from the country, comes amid Democratic outrage over the Obama administration’s recent spate of deportation raids, which resulted in the apprehension of 121 people.
Saul Enrique Banegas-Guzman, 46, died Friday at a Louisiana Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. He had suffered a previous cardiac arrest earlier in the month at the LaSalle Detention Facility near Jena, La., but he was moved via ambulance to LaSalle General Hospital where doctors stabilized him before transferring him to the Rapides Regional Medical Center.
Banegas-Guzman was not part of the most recent ICE push to round up and deport illegal immigrants from the Central American countries of Honduras, Colombia and El Salvador.
In a press release, ICE said he “entered custody” Nov. 30 from the Lonoke Police Department in Lonoke, Ark. After serving a sentence for a 2005 felony conviction for “manufacturing, distributing or possessing a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia.”
Following federal government protocol, ICE notified the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General and ICE Office of Professional Responsibility of his death, and worked with Honduran consular officials to notify his family in Honduras, the agency said.
ICE also noted that Banegas-Guzman is the second detainee to pass away in ICE custody in fiscal year 2016, which begins Oct. 1. The agency did not provide details about the previous death.
A trio of House Democrats, including California Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Lucille Roybal-Allard, as well as Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, have been leading the charge to stop the Obama administration’s immigration raids. Their offices didn’t respond to a request for comment on Banegas-Guzman’s death.
Earlier this month, Democrats offered tepid praise for the administration’s expansion of its refugee resettlement program to include the three Central American countries.
While the move would not stop the raids, the administration said it would broaden its refugee program to allow vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to apply for refugee status and seek asylum in the United States.
The policy shift would apply only to potential immigrants before they come to the United States, not immigrants who are already here and subject to the ICE raids. It also would do nothing for immigrants from Central America who have already been deported.
Lofgren, Roybal-Allard and Gutierrez have argued that many of the immigrants ICE is picking up in the raids, especially mothers and children, are fleeing for their lives that could cost them their lives. Democrats say they should be given special refugee status and better due process because of violence in their home countries.
“The U.S. must continue to be a beacon of safety and refuge for those seeking protection from persecution,” they wrote in a letter signed by 143 other House Democrats and sent to Obama earlier this month. “This new Central American refugee program should be an expansion of our efforts to provide refuge — not a substitute for our existing asylum process.”
