Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado, a 68-year-old man originally from Mexico, died on May 5th. He was in the midst of being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from a county jail to a federal detention facility when he passed away. Seven days later, on April 16, Delgado back in Texarcana was arrested for a state parole violation. Though the arrest was unconstitutional, it led ICE to detain him. His family strongly maintains that he was healthy prior to his detention. This is an astounding point that raises grave concerns about the facts surrounding his death.
Delgado remained in the medical unit of the Lowndes County Jail for her detox. He required a total of five unique medications, including two for high blood pressure and an antibiotic. Family members stated that during one visit, Delgado could not form coherent thoughts and showed alarming signs. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes and just kept turning his head side to side,” recalled his son, Junior.
During the visit, Junior pleaded with his father: “I said, ‘Dad, please answer me! Say something to me!’ He just said, ‘Hmmmm.’ It broke me.” These observations, paired with the accounts of advocates and family members, have caused concern about the level of medical care afforded to detainees.
After being arrested and taken into custody, Delgado was put into a wheelchair, showing that he may have suffered from mobility impairment. On the day he died, he was found unresponsive in a transport van run by TransCor, a subsidiary company of CoreCivic. On exam, at that visit, his blood pressure was extremely elevated at 226/57. During the trip, the van stopped near Weston, Georgia, where the driver called 911 requesting emergency services.
The exact cause of Delgado’s death is still being investigated by ICE. Coroner Steven D. Hubbard has proposed that an aortic aneurysm may have been behind his unexpected death. The discrepancy regarding Delgado’s health status has emerged; while jail staff claimed that medication was administered to him—“We gave him his medication, that’s probably why he’s that way,” stated a jail staffer—Capt. Jason Clifton noted there was no record of any medications in Delgado’s medical chart.
As this investigation continues, substantial questions have emerged about ICE’s practices for ensuring the health of detainees in their care before transport. Dora Schriro, then the DHS expert on immigration enforcement, stated that greater transparency and oversight is essential to ensure detainee welfare. She said ICE has an obligation to make sure each individual removed from law enforcement is travel ready. That means thinking about the length and nature of their journey.
Schriro pointed out that as operational demands increase within ICE—”As input/output grows – not just in size, but in speed – the likelihood of making mistakes is going to increase.” This raises not only procedural concerns, but deeply troubling questions about the possible lack of care or neglect in treating detainees such as Delgado.
Ryan Gustin with TransCor shared his perspective on the issue. He stressed that the safety and security of the public, their staff, and those in their care remain TransCor’s highest priorities. He stopped short of sharing specific safety and security equipment used when transporting.
Advocates continue to demand ICE be held accountable, both through this investigation and on a larger scale, related to health care and safety within ICE-detention facilities. Fellow Unite-LA graduate Amilcar Valencia expresses the difficulty families still encounter in knowing where to go for information. You need to uncover the truth, but a complicated system prevents you from accessing it at every turn,” he explained.
Delgado spent more than four decades living in the United States. Without ever getting legal immigration status, he’s worked exclusively on tobacco and vegetable farms. His family is still trying to come to terms with the fact that they’re gone. They’re looking for answers, just as you are, on how a healthy man without serious health conditions dies in transit while in government custody.