Another Man Died in ICE Custody. His Family Say He Was Denied His Medication.

Focus on the Trump administration’s cruel deportation and terrorization engine has understandably been revolving in the last week around two new deaths of American residents who found themselves gunned down by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In Texas, it was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who had spent 35 years building a thriving homebuilding business, employing dozens–now ICE is trying to deport the only witnesses who saw Araujo shot to death. And in Maine it was Johan Guerrero, who was left dead in the street after being pulled from his car, his 3-year-old daughter standing in pajamas nearby. Neither federal agent who did the shooting bothered to wear a body camera, and both involved highly questionable traffic stops–a source of bad headlines that caused DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to briefly order the vehicle stop policy halted … until Donald Trump overruled him and ordered ICE agents to immediately continue creating the same situations that so often end in death. So yeah, it’s understandable that these stories were dominating the headlines.

At the same time, however, another story of someone who died in ICE custody on Monday of this week has slipped largely under the radar. That man is Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old native of Venezuela. He had been arrested last week in Georgia and was being held at the privately operated Irwin County Detention Center, a facility with a grim history of alleged medical abuse, which previously caused its ICE contract to be terminated in 2021 by the Biden administration. Merely four days after his detention, Arenas-Silva was somehow discovered “unresponsive” on a prison bus while in the middle of a transfer to another facility. He was quickly pronounced dead, with ICE saying the “suspected” cause of death was cardiac arrested.

ICE has killed another person, this time by depriving him of life-sustaining medication for a known medical condition.

Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva was detained on Thursday. He was dead by Monday.

Per @detentionwatchnetwork.org:

[image or embed]

— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) 2:53 PM · Jul 15, 2026

Tragically, this basic outline sounds a whole lot like many deaths in ICE custody, in which people with underlying health conditions are subjected to extremely stressful treatment and suffer fatal medical episodes. On some level, this is just a numbers game: With DHS under orders to process ever more people and increase the number of detainees being held in U.S. detention facilities to 100,000 and beyond, it is almost mathematically inevitable that these types of deaths will rise. But at the same time, with fewer actual inspections of those ICE facilities than ever despite the surge in prisoners/detainees, one naturally needs to worry that lax conditions, oversights and good-old-fashioned sadism will result in even more deaths than would occur otherwise. And in the case of Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, his family alleges in no uncertain terms that he was denied the medication he explicitly needed for his unnamed health condition, and was not allowed to have it. As the press statement put out by the family following the death put it: “He went without medication during his detention until he tragically died in ICE custody on Monday.”

When Arenas-Silva was first detained in his home on Thursday of last week, family say ICE ignored their pleas to allow him to bring his medication with him, and then arbitrarily said he could bring “one medication.” He would later call his sister from the detention facility and reportedly told her that he was not receiving the medication he needed. He would be dead within 72 hours.

“I am 100% certain that he did not receive proper care,” said the unnamed sister of Arenas-Silva via a press release reported by The Guardian. “I deeply mourn his passing in such a cruel manner; that is why I will seek justice for him and for everyone else who goes through this, so that other families do not have to endure what we are going through. No one should go through this.”

When asked for comment specifically on the issue of Arenas-Silva’s medication, meanwhile, DHS responded to The Guardian by simply repeating a line from the agency’s own press announcement of the man’s death: “While in custody, Arenas-Silva received medical care and was seen by medical professionals.” You will of course note that there are no specific references to the medication they’re being asked about. A request for additional information from ICE from Splinter was not immediately returned–this story will be updated if we receive another statement.

The Irwin County Detention Center, meanwhile, only began holding ICE detainees again last year in response to the Trump/Stephen Miller deportation bonanza, after its ICE contract had been terminated in 2021 following several investigations involving allegations of medical abuse. In 2020, the facility had been wracked by numerous allegations in particular that women detained there had been subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures, with a report from a U.S. Senate subcommittee concluding in 2022 that “female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures.”

The Irwin county detention center where Arenas-Silva had been held began detaining immigrants again last year.

Its contract with ICE had been terminated in 2021 by the Biden administration after a nurse working at the facility blew the whistle on medical abuses.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026…

[image or embed]

— 🌹WeegieFromWA 🍀 (@onefussyone.bsky.social) 2:42 PM · Jul 15, 2026

“He should have never been detained at the notorious Irwin County Detention Center, especially given his medical condition,” reads a statement from Azadeh Shahshahani, a director of Georgia civil rights organization Project South. “ICE’s callous disregard towards the humanity of Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva, not even allowing him to take along his essential medication, is abominable. They must be held accountable.”

If the agency deigns to comment any further about the death of Arenas-Silva at all (doubtful), it will no doubt refer as it does in its initial press release to the official cause of death being under “further medical examination” or investigation. ICE does this frequently, only to then offer no additional details of any value in its final detainee death reports, which are meant to be the final word on the circumstances that led to the death of any given person in detention. Said reports, in fact, have become seemingly less and less filled with detail over time, and now amount to ICE simply repeating the information from the initial press release. Look no further than the January death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos at ICE’s Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, which a local medical examiner classified as a homicide–the agency’s final detainee death report never actually explains how Campos died, though it mentions a “spontaneous use of force” being employed on him. Ditto the case of Jean Wilson Brutus, a seemingly healthy 41-year-old who entered ICE detention at New Jersey’s infamous Delaney Hall and was dead literally five hours later. Again, ICE’s final detainee death report didn’t actually include trivial details like a cause of death. Why would that be important?

The aforementioned rate of deaths in incarceration, meanwhile, continues to climb. Last year saw at least 33 people die while in detention, the highest total in more than 20 years. This year, meanwhile, is poised to easily surpass that number: At least 22 people have died in detention as of mid-July, and again these numbers may be significantly lower than the true figures. ICE has already admitted to changing how some of these figures will be recorded moving forward, such as no longer recording the deaths of those who die shortly after being released from ICE custody. Every few weeks, meanwhile, we record another death: Recently, an 85-year-old man from Germany, Adrian Andreas Florian, suffered the indignity of spending his final moments in ICE custody. How many more will join him by the end of Trump’s second term in office?

“We must continue to fight for accountability for everyone who has lost a loved one,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA) via social media, following the death of Arenas-Silva. “And it’s time to end the use of all for-profit detention centers.”