ICE investigations reveal 23 deaths in custody after substandard care

San Francisco Chronicle · St. John Barned-Smith, Ko Lyn Cheang · 2026-11-06 12:00 UTC

Internal ICE investigations reveal 23 deaths in custody after substandard medical care. The blunt reports echo previous findings by the Chronicle.

When Huabing Xie told detention staff at an ICE facility in California that his chest hurt, neither of the supervising medical providers on site evaluated or treated him. Nearly two hours later, he died of a heart attack.

Delvin Rodriguez hanged himself with a bedsheet, a day after telling a guard at an ICE facility in Mississippi he didn’t want “to be on the earth anymore.” A correctional officer had removed the sheet from his cell, but another guard returned it.

At a federal detention facility in Philadelphia, medical staff diagnosed Parady La with drug withdrawal. They said he had vomited and was in a stupor. Yet they didn’t send him to the emergency room until guards discovered he had no pulse and his lips and hands had turned blue. He was later pronounced dead.

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