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When Parady La, a Cambodian American father and long-time Philadelphia resident, died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody earlier this year just three days after he was arrested, the agency released scant details about what happened.
La, 46, was “found distressed and stuporous with ongoing vomiting and abnormal vital signs” at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, according to the account ICE gave in a detainee death report. The next line in the report says only: “Later that day, medical staff responded to a medical emergency and found Mr. LA unresponsive and pulseless.”
He was then brought to a Philadelphia hospital, where ICE said he “remained unconscious with evidence of anoxic brain injury and multi-organ failure” and was ultimately pronounced dead.
More than seven months later, his family still doesn’t understand what happened in his final hours, or why no one was there to help him sooner. ICE has provided no further information about the “emergency” La suffered or what medical attention—if any—he received following his health troubles earlier in the day.
“There’s obviously a lot missing, a lot we don’t know, and the uncertainty of it all is really hard,” his daughter, Jazmine La, tells TIME. “It makes it hard to move on or grieve properly.”
La is one of more than 30 people who have died in ICE detention since October amid a surge in fatalities that has raised alarm from experts and left rights groups and a growing number of families searching for answers—and, perhaps, a measure of accountability.
The fatality rate in ICE custody reached a 22-year high in the opening months of this fiscal year, according to a report published in the medical journal JAMA earlier this year. Between the beginning of October and Jan. 19, the latest date in the report’s analysis, 18 immigration detainee deaths were reported; since then, at least 17 other people have died while being held by ICE.
By comparison, 3 people died in ICE detention in the full 2022 fiscal year, per the report.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses ICE, maintained in a statement to TIME that “there has been NO spike in deaths.”
“Consistent with data over the last decade, as of May 29, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population,” the spokesperson said. “As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens—including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”
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Left: Chaofeng Ge. Right: Parady La with his daughter, Jazmine La.Courtesy of Yanfeng Ge; Courtesy of Jazmine La
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