A man being held at a US immigration detention facility in Arizona died this week after reporting severe tooth pain and not receiving “timely medical attention”, according to a local official.
Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian asylum seeker, was being held at the Florence correctional center in Arizona when he began to feel a toothache in mid-February, a pain that weeks later led him to the hospital before he died on Monday.
“His reported struggle to receive timely medical attention before being transferred to a hospital raises serious and painful concerns about the quality of care provided to individuals in custody,” Christine Ellis, a Chandler city council member, said in an Instagram post.
On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed Damas died at HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. The center’s physician reported the preliminary cause of death “as unknown at this time”.
According to ICE’s account, Damas was transferred between several hospitals after reporting shortness of breath on 19 February. He remained on a ventilator for several days, with one physician reporting a likely diagnosis to be “septic shock due to pneumonia”. He received IV antibiotics, cardiothoracic procedures and several tests, along with a visit from his family, before he died on 2 March, according to ICE.
Damas was taken into custody by federal immigration agents in Boston in September 2025 and was later transferred to the facility in Florence, Arizona, while he waited for his immigration case.
The Arizona Daily Star reported that Ellis had called for an investigation into Damas’s death.
“He was complaining for almost two weeks straight, until he collapsed and got septic from the infection,” Ellis told the local news outlet. Damas was transferred to a Scottsdale hospital on 25 February.
Ellis’s office and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.
Damas’s death has not yet been reported by ICE, according to the agency’s notifications of detainee deaths. At least nine people have died under custody in 2026, according to ICE: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 42; Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55; Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, 68; Parady La, 46; Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, 34; Víctor Manuel Díaz, 36; Lorth Sim, 59; Jairo Garcia-Hernandez, 27; and Alberto Gutiérrez-Reyes, 48.
At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, marking the deadliest year for detainees of the federal immigration agency in more than two decades.
The stark number of deaths has been just one component of a tumultuous tenure for Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary. On Thursday, Donald Trump announced he would be ousting Noem and replacing her with Markwayne Mullin, a Republican Oklahoma senator, starting on 31 March.
Under her helm, the DHS has faced bipartisan backlash after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the hands of federal immigration agents earlier this year. Noem accused both US citizens of being involved in “domestic terrorism”.
