Haitian asylum-seeker dies in ICE custody in Az from untreated tooth infection

'A toothache should not be a death sentence' — Boston man detained for ICE at Arizona private prison had been held since September

A Haitian asylum seeker who spent months in detention at the Florence Correctional Center died at a Scottsdale hospital on Monday from complications caused by an infected tooth.

Emmanuel Clifford Damas, 56, died on Monday from sepsis, weeks after he complained of a toothache while in custody at the private prison operated by CoreCivic under contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Details of his case were provided to the Tucson Sentinel by Christine Ellis, a nurse who sits on the Chandler City Council who was contacted by Damas' brother.

On Feb. 12, Damas told family members he had a toothache, and was sent to the infirmary where a CoreCivic employee gave him ibuprofen, Ellis told the Sentinel on Wednesday. His pain continued and he was again given painkillers, even as his face swelled up and his pain worsened, Ellis said.

A few days later, on Feb. 19, Damas collapsed. Days later, officials at the hospital called his brother who said Damas faced a "grave situation" and that he'd been intubated and he needed surgery to combat the infection in the back of his mouth and his throat.

Later, while his brother struggled to find his brother and learn how he was doing, officials called and said the family needed to come to the hospital.

"If you can get here, get here," they told Damas' brother, Ellis said.

Damas died of sepsis Monday afternoon, making him one of a record 39 people to die in ICE custody since the inauguration of President Donald Trump just more than 13 months ago. His death was first reported by the Arizona Daily Star.

Ellis was sharply critical of how Damas was treated while in detention, and said she would call for an investigation against the health care employees at the facility, and seek to pull their medical licenses.

"They did not do the proper assessment," Ellis said, a registered nurse who serves on the Arizona State Board of Nursing.

Ellis said the nurses and doctors at the CoreCivic facility know "never take anyone's pain for granted, and they should have realized he was not kidding."

She said a real assessment would have shown signs of an infection.

"With that, they could have gotten an order for antibiotics and that would have saved his life," she said.

"An antibiotic could have saved him," she repeated.

"As a health care worker and as a person, I am outraged" she added. "We take an oath to take care of sick people. Every person should be treated as a patient and not just dismissed. I am on the nursing board, and I want to see them defend why they didn’t take care of this man," she said.

She said the family was seeking an autopsy to understand how Damas died.

Damas was taken into custody by ICE officials in Boston in September and transferred to Florence, Ellis said.

Ellis said Damas was picked up in Boston after a neighbor called police because his 13-year-old son was outside. Family members paid his bail and he was set for release, but was taken into custody by ICE agents, she said.

She said the agency moved him across the country from Boston to Buffalo, New York and then to Texas.

"Moving people back and forth like this is psychological warfare. They are putting families into trauma, and don’t know they’re loved ones are going to be," she said.

The Chandler councilwoman was born in Tiburon, Haiti, and Damas' brother reached out to her through a community organization. She has lived in the U.S. since 1986, and been a registered nurse in the Phoenix suburb for three decades.

Ellis wrote on social media she was "deeply heartbroken" by Damas' death. "My prayers are with Mr. Damas' family and the Haitian community during this difficult time. No family should ever endure such a loss, especially under circumstances that raise questions about access to timely and appropriate medical care."

Following a request for comment on the man's death, Yasmeen Pitts-O'Keefe, a DHS spokeswoman said a "news release was forthcoming."

The agency had yet to release a statement by Wednesday evening.

People who request asylum and are deemed to have a "credible" claim by officials are generally legally present in the United States while their cases are being reviewed — which can often take years in backlogged, understaffed immigration hearing offices.

Record number of deaths in ICE custody

Since Trump was sworn in, at least 39 people died in ICE custody in the last 13 months, including 29 people in 2025. In the first few months of 2026, an additional 10 people have died while being detained by the agency.

The previous annual record for ICE detainee deaths was 2004, when 32 people died.

Those numbers do not include people shot and killed by immigration agents from both ICE and CBP, who have shot 32 people since January 2025, killing 9.

The 13-month total does not include others who have died while being detained by federal immigration agents outside of ICE facilities, such as a woman from China who died by suicide in a Yuma Border Patrol station last April. 11 people died in Border Patrol custody throughout 2025, and one man died in January 2026 of an apparent heart attack near Del Rio, Texas.

In the Yuma incident, first reported by the Tucson Sentinel, Border Patrol agents failed to make required observation rounds of the facility, officials said. Other recent deaths also involve instances of alleged medical neglect.

On Friday, 48-year-old Alberto Gutierrez-Reyes died at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, in Barstow, Calif.. Gutierrez-Reyes, originally from Mexico was apprehended during an operation near Echo Park in Los Angeles. ICE officials said a physician conducted an intake exam in Jan. 12, but weeks later, on Feb. 25, he said he was feeling faint and was admitted for chest pain and shortness of breath.

Two days later, he was dead.

Following Guiterrez-Reyes' death, ICE put out a release that said the agency is "committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments. Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay."

While the agency regularly uses similar boilerplate language, officials decided to add a final statement on Friday. "This is the best healthcare than many aliens have received in their entire lives," the agency claimed.

'A toothache should not be a death sentence'

The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, an advocacy group that regularly works at the facility, said they were "devastated" by Emmanuel Damas' death.

"We are heartbroken by the passing of Emmanuel Damas in ICE custody. We do not have any information on Mr. Damas’ specific case at this time beyond that which has been publicly reported, but we do know ICE custody," said Laura St. John, the nonprofit group's legal director. "We have long been deeply concerned with the substandard medical care that people in ICE custody receive, particularly dental care, and have issued reports documenting our clients’ experiences and calling for reform."

"ICE routinely refuses dental care to people until they have been in custody for six months, and that clock typically resets each time someone is transferred," St. John said. "Every person deserves appropriate medical and dental care, and we are deeply troubled by the reports of what Mr. Damas endured leading to his passing."

"I am sickened by reports that yet another person has died in ICE custody after being left without basic medical care. A toothache should not be a death sentence,” said U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva. “How many more people have to die at federal detention facilities before we say enough is enough?"

Two weeks ago, Grijalva criticized ICE for holding a 79-year-old woman who was increasingly suffering from dementia.

Julia Benitez, a Cuban asylum-seeker who crossed into the U.S. last May near Lukeville, Ariz., spent nearly nine months in custody despite increasing concerns from family members until her release last week following Grijalva's efforts.

"Emmanuel Damas should be alive today," she wrote. "These are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – people dying from simple, treatable ailments because they are being treated as less than human."

"In other facilities, children with burning fevers are in medical distress because this administration is obsessed with meeting arbitrary deportation quotas, cramming people into detention facilities, and neglecting their most basic medical needs in order to maximize profits for private prison companies," Grijalva wrote.

Grijalva also called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign.

"These deaths have occurred under Secretary Noem’s watch, which is one of a long list of reasons why she should resign. This is not about politics – it's about basic human dignity. I am absolutely disgusted by yet another preventable death in ICE custody, and am calling on DHS for an immediate investigation into this incident," she said. "Congress must act to dismantle ICE – a lawless and deadly agency."

In mid-February, 22 Democratic senators sent to a letter to Noem and Lyons, the senior official in charge of ICE, writing they were "shocked to see the dramatic increase in deaths in immigration detention on your watch."

"This rapidly increasing number of deaths is a clear byproduct of the Trump administration’s dangerous and poorly executed mass deportation agenda—one focused on detaining as many immigrants as possible, not just the 'worst of the worst,' for extended periods of time," the senators wrote.

"We urge you to use the unprecedented resources at your disposal to reinvigorate your agency’s detention oversight efforts, investigate these deaths, and provide those in your custody with adequate medical care," they wrote.

ICE moves to expand detention

During the first nine months of the Trump administration, ICE arrests quadrupled, including both street arrests and transfers from jails and prisons to ICE, according to data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project. While street arrests spiked, so did the number of people arrested without criminal conviction.

Further, the administration "roughly tripled the number of detention beds used for people arrested within the United States."

"That capacity increase was a result both of new funding (for new detention centers and more beds in existing detention centers) and of a decrease in arrests at the border," they said. "Once arrested, few were released."

They noted that releases have declined, while deportations haven't risen quickly. "Perhaps because of the lower release rate, voluntary departures (which are rare compared to removals) increased by 21 times," they said, indicated many people gave up on their cases while in detention.

This year, ICE has quickly moved to rapidly expand its detention capabilities fueled by the massive influx of funding created after Congress passed H.R. 1, the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

The legislation laid out billions for border enforcement and immigration, including $45 billion to expand detention capacity, and tripling ICE's detention budget to at least $14 billion per year.

The bill also gave ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations—the arm primarily responsible for arresting and deporting immigrants in the U.S. interior—nearly $30 billion.

With the bill, ICE has funding for up to 135,000 detention beds through the end of the 2029 fiscal year, AILA said.

As part this, ICE launched the Detention Reengineering Initiative, designed to "strategically increase bed capacity to 92,600 beds" using private and public facilities, including warehouses that could hold up to 10,000 people.

Meanwhile, the agency has sought to reopen a privately run prison near Marana, Ariz., for use as a detention center for hundreds of people taken into federal immigration custody in Southern Arizona.

'Tremendously affecting'

The Trump administration moved swiftly to cancel or undermine a raft of protections for immigrants. Since his inauguration, more than 1.5 million immigrants either lost or will lose their temporary legal status, including work authorizations and deportation protections, State Newsroom reported.

Haitians have long had Temporary Protected Status following a devastating earthquake in 2010, but Homeland Security's Noem has repeatedly fought to strip away this safety leading to a recent court fight. On Feb. 3, Noem determined Haiti—a country where widespread gang violence continues— does not meet the conditions to give people in the U.S. protected status.

"Haiti’s TPS designation and related benefits were slated to terminate" on Feb. 3, DHS wrote, however "a single judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order staying the secretary’s TPS termination decision."

"The judge did so even though the Department of Homeland Security recently prevailed twice in the U.S. Supreme Court in a similar case," DHS officials said. "The Department of Homeland Security vehemently disagrees with this order and is working with Department of Justice to determine next steps."

Ellis said the Haitian community in the Phoenix area is small and relatively tight-knit, and over the past year, Haitian immigrants have tried to keep track of each other.

"It's tremendously affecting," Ellis said on Wednesday. "The government created a pathway for people to come here, and they were all doing the things they needed to, jumping through all the right hoops and vetting. They contribute, they stimulate the economy. Wherever Haitians landed, the community thrived."

She said without the protections under TPS, people are looking for other legal pathways to stay, seeking lawyers and filing the required applications.

Damas, she said had a lawyer and had filed for asylum. "So what does this mean for other people?"

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