A 45-year-old Venezuelan man has died while in federal immigration custody in Georgia, becoming the 22nd person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody this year.
Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva passed away on Monday morning during a transfer between detention facilities, according to a report by The Guardian.
ICE officials said Arenas-Silva was arrested last Thursday and held at the privately operated Irwin County Detention Center.
He was being transferred to the Folkston ICE Processing Center when staff found him unresponsive on a transport bus.
Cardiac arrest is the suspected cause of death.
Recent Deaths Raise Concerns
This incident comes as the Department of Homeland Security faces mounting pressure over its enforcement methods.
Three other individuals have died during DHS enforcement operations within the past week alone.
Last week, an ICE official shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.
Additionally, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by ICE officials in Maine this week.
On Tuesday morning, another man died during an ICE enforcement operation when he was struck by a semi-truck while fleeing officials.
Records show Arenas-Silva entered the United States in 2021 and was encountered by border patrol in California shortly after.
In April, an immigration judge in Atlanta ordered his removal to Venezuela. ICE officers arrested him last week during a targeted enforcement action in Dallas, Georgia.
Following his discovery on the bus, staff requested medical assistance and transported him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Irwin County Detention Center, where he was initially held, resumed detaining immigrants last year.
The Biden administration had terminated the facility's ICE contract in 2021 following whistleblower allegations of medical abuse.
In 2020, the site gained notoriety over allegations that detained women were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures.
A 2022 Senate subcommittee investigation concluded that female detainees appeared to have undergone excessive and unnecessary procedures.
Arenas-Silva's death follows the late June passing of Adrian Andreas Florian, an 85-year-old German national who died in a Texas hospital while in ICE custody.
The DHS has expanded its detention capacity since the second Trump administration took office last year. Consequently, ICE custody deaths have reached record numbers since January 2025.
In 2025, ICE reported 33 detainee deaths, marking the highest annual total in over two decades.
These fatalities have drawn international criticism from human rights organizations.
In late June, Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, raised concerns regarding US immigration custody deaths and demanded swift, independent investigations.
