ICE custody death raises questions

Ex-DACA recipient is 14th to die in lockup this year. Facility had been called unsafe.

- BY RUBEN VIVES AND JENNY JARVIE

MYUNG J. CHUN Los Angeles Times

NOT LONG after arriving at Adelanto, Ismael Ayala-Uribe said that he felt sick.

About two weeks after arriving at the Adelanto immigration detention center, Ismael Ayala-Uribe complained that he felt sick.

At first, the 39-year-old Mexican immigrant said he had a cough, his younger brother Jose said. Then a fever.

By Thursday, he was “shaking and complaining of pain in his rear,” and a staff member flagged his condition as potentially life-threatening, according to internal emails written by an intake lieutenant and ob-

tained by The Times. He was rushed to a detention medical center in a wheelchair.

But an hour and a half later, medical staffers cleared Ayala-Uribe to go back to his dorm. He was not taken to a hospital and scheduled for surgery for an abscess on his buttock until three days later.

By 2:32 a.m. Monday morning, he was dead.

Ismael Ayala-Uribe’s death in federal immigration custody spotlights longstanding concerns about medical care inside Adelanto, one of the largest federal immigration detention centers in California. It also raises broader questions about whether immigration detention centers across the nation are equipped to house the surge of people taken into custody since President Trump ratcheted up his mass deportation agenda.

Ayala-Uribe came to the U.S. when he was about 4 years old and had previously been protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. His renewal application was denied nearly a decade ago after he was convicted of driving under the influence.

"I'm angry, sad," Jose said. "My parents are pretty much broken."