The death toll among detainees held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reached 22 so far in 2025, after a 45-year-old Venezuelan national collapsed and died aboard a transport bus in Georgia on Monday. Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva lost consciousness while being moved from the Irwin County Detention Center — a privately operated facility — to the Folkston ICE processing center. ICE attributed the suspected cause to cardiac arrest.
Family members and Georgia-based immigrants' rights organizations are disputing the agency's account, alleging that Arenas-Silva was denied essential medication throughout his time in custody. According to a joint press statement, when officers came to his home to arrest him last Thursday following a targeted enforcement action in Dallas, Georgia, they initially brushed aside the family's request that he be allowed to take his medicine, ultimately permitting him to take only one of his medications. He subsequently phoned his sister from detention to tell her the medication he required was not being provided. "He went without medication during his detention until he tragically died in ICE custody on Monday," the statement said.
The Department of Homeland Security responded to those allegations by re-circulating ICE's original press release, drawing attention to the passage stating: "While in custody, Arenas-Silva received medical care and was seen by medical professionals."
ICE records show Arenas-Silva had crossed into the United States in 2021, encountering Border Patrol agents in California shortly after entry. An immigration judge in Atlanta issued a removal order to Venezuela in April, and he was taken into custody last Thursday before his death four days later.
Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director for Project South, a Georgia civil rights organization, argued in the statement that Arenas-Silva's medical condition should have disqualified him from being held at Irwin County altogether. Shahshahani described ICE's conduct as "abominable" and called for the agency to be held accountable and abolished immediately.
The Irwin County facility carries a troubled history. The Biden administration severed its ICE contract in 2021 after a whistleblower raised allegations of medical abuse, and the center drew widesprEAD attention in 2020 over claims that detained women were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures. A Senate subcommittee inquiry in 2022 concluded that "female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures." The facility resumed housing ICE detainees last year.
Arenas-Silva's relatives are pressing for an independent investigation into the circumstances of his death. His case follows that of Adrian Andreas Florian, an 85-year-old German national who died in a Texas hospital while in ICE custody in late June.
His death is one of several in rapid succession tied to immigration enforcement. Last week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Texas. This week, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was killed by ICE agents in Maine. On Tuesday morning, a separate man died after being struck by a semi-truck while attempting to flee during an ICE enforcement operation.
Since January 2025, ICE has reported 33 detainee deaths — the highest annual figure in more than two decades — as the second Trump administration has significantly expanded both detention capacity and the overall number of people held. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal took to X to demand accountability and an end to for-profit detention facilities. The mounting death count has also attracted scrutiny abroad: in late June, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for "prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations" into deaths occurring in U.S. immigration custody.
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