ICE Detention Deaths: GEO Group And CoreCivic Facilities Kill Four Immigrants In Four Days

Four immigrants died while in ICE detention over a four-day period last week, with three deaths in facilities operated by GEO Group and one in a facility operated by CoreCivic.

“Thomas Brewster The prognosis for Dulce Atahuaman Carhuancho was grim”

Forbes Argentina

The deaths included Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, from Haiti, who died on December 12, and Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, 39, from Nicaragua, who was pronounced dead at Natchez Hospital in Natchez, Mississippi, after staff at Adams County Detention Center, operated for ICE by CoreCivic, found him unresponsive and without a pulse.

Forbes Argentina

ICE records cited by the World Socialist Web Site said all four died suddenly from medical problems ranging from chest pains to diabetes, and the article says Brutus died the day after his arrival at the GEO Group Newark facility in New Jersey.

The same World Socialist Web Site account says Abdulkadir died at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, after 215 days in ICE detention, and it adds that his death occurred just three days after he filed a federal complaint seeking emergency habeas relief.

In response to the deaths, Eunice Cho, senior counsel for the ACLU's National Prison Project, told the Washington Post that four inmate deaths in one week signal a major crisis and reflect a deterioration in medical care and detention conditions at ICE facilities.

A judge issued what The Intercept describes as what appears to be the first-ever sanction against CoreCivic for destroying video evidence in a case alleging wrongful death of a man who died by suicide in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

The Intercept reports the judge ordered an adverse inference against the company in a December hearing, meaning a jury could presume missing evidence was unfavorable in an eventual trial.

The Haitian Times

Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney of ACLU New Mexico and part of the plaintiffs’ legal team, told The Intercept that the sanction responded to prison companies’ propensity for overwriting video evidence, saying, "It’s a practice we documented and unearthed: CoreCivic routinely lets video evidence be overwritten,".

The Intercept says the case involved the detention of Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old Brazilian asylum-seeker who died in a hospital on August 24, 2022, seven days after attempting suicide at the CoreCivic-owned Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico.

The Intercept also reports that Sheff testified CoreCivic destroyed footage from 14 of 15 cameras in use that day, and that Judge Francis J. Mathew said, "That’s a question I’m not sure we can answer without that video."

The Haitian Times says Emmanuel Damas, 56, died on Monday from complications of a dental infection that, according to his family, was not treated during his detention at an ICE detention center in Arizona.

“A judge Issued what appears to be the first-ever sanction against the private prison giant CoreCivic for destroying video evidence in a case alleging wrongful death of a man who died by suicide in U”

The Intercept

It reports that Damas had been in detention since September and remained in detention even after his asylum request was denied, and that he first voiced his concerns to the hospital's medical staff at the Florence Correctional Center, operated by CoreCivic.

The article says Damas is the fourteenth death in ICE detention, and it adds that ICE recorded 32 detainee deaths in 2025, the highest number in more than 20 years, including two other Haitians.

The Haitian Times also quotes Wednesday Presly Nelson, Damas's brother, saying, "As a country — I am American now — I think we can do better than this," and it reports that Christine Ellis, a Chandler, Arizona city council member and Haitian-born registered nurse, said she was "utterly outraged that there were licensed medical professionals working there who allowed such things to happen,".

Across the broader set of cases described in the World Socialist Web Site account, it says at least 32 migrants have died in ICE detention since the start of the year and that the rising death toll has renewed calls from human rights organizations and lawmakers to end the use of for-profit detention centers.