An investigation is being carried out after a Vietnamese citizen died at the hospital on Saturday while he was in custody of immigration and customs compliance, according to an email seen by NBC News.
Tien Xuan Phan, 55, had been in custody at the ICE processing center in Karnes County, Texas, for seven weeks. A family representative did not respond to a request for comments.
According to ICE email, Phan was taken to the local hospital, Otto Kaiser Memorial Hospital, on Friday for “evaluation due to seizures, vomiting and lack of response and then was transferred by plane to the Northeast Methodist hospital for an additional evaluation.”
The cause of death was not declared and now is the issue of investigation. ICE routinely conducts research on any death detained and publishes them online after 90 days.
Phan was ordered to be withdrawn from the country by an immigration judge on April 2, 2012, but an ICE official says that “they did not leave the United States as ordered.” Phan was arrested in early June this year.
The installation of Karnes in Texas, sometimes, has exceeded its contractual capacity of 928, and once it kept 1,311 arrested this fiscal year, according to the data obtained by immigration researchers at the University of Syracuse.
NBC News contacted ICE and the National Security Department to make more comments on whether Phan had a criminal record.
So far this year, eight detainees have died while they are in ice custody, according to the agency’s own figures, including another Vietnam. The rest were from Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Honduras and Guyana.
In total, 12 detainees died in ice custody in 2024, according to the figures.
The American Union of Civil Liberties and other human rights groups said in a report last year that most of the deaths of people in ICE custody between 2017 and 2021 could have been avoided if the agency had provided adequate medical attention.
The administration of President Donald Trump has made the arrest and sport of alleged illegal foreigners a central policy of this term, and ICE officials were told to make thousands of arrests every day.
