Woman deported before she could see dying husband in ICE custody: ‘I never saw him again’

A Guatemalan man has become the first person to die in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas. His wife of 25 years was deported from the same camp without a chance to see her dying husband.

Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, 48, died on 3 December at a hospital in El Paso, as Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates were ramping up demands that the camp be closed down amid allegations of inhumane conditions there. The DHS has said such allegations are “categorically false”.

ICE suspected the cause of Gaspar-Andrés’s death to be “natural liver and kidney failure”, adding that: “From the moment they were notified of his health crisis, ICE medical staff ensured he had constant, high-quality care.”

The agency issued a press release detailing a litany of escalating medical complaints over his 10 weeks in Texas and said he received care at the camp in November for “a variety of ailments” including flu-like symptoms, bleeding gums, fever, jaundice and hypertension.

“On November 14, an immigration judge ordered Gaspar-Andrés removed to Guatemala,” according to the ICE release.

He was hospitalized on 16 November as his condition worsened. He had an infection and ultimately deteriorated into organ failure, internal bleeding and death.

On 28 November, his wife, now widow, Lucía Pedro Juan, was put on a deportation flight to Guatemala, after also being held at the ICE tent facility known as Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss, according to an account she gave to the El Paso Times.

The Trump administration ordered Camp East Montana constructed earlier this year to hold migrants on the army base.

Pedro Juan was traced by the El Paso Times to the town of Santa Eulalia in Guatemala’s western highlands, where she told journalists visiting her that she and her husband had been taken separately to Fort Bliss after being arrested during a traffic stop in south Florida in September, where they had lived for years and have five children.

“I never saw him again, I never spoke to him or heard his voice again. It’s something terrible they did to us,” she tearfully told the Texas outlet in an in-depth interview.

Pedro Juan also said that she had eventually agreed to be deported to Guatemala because she feared she might die amid the US camp’s harsh conditions.

ICE and DHS did not respond to queries and requests for comment from the Guardian about Pedro Juan.

Gaspar-Andrés and Pedro Juan had separately crossed the US-Mexico border without authorization more than 18 years ago and lived near Homestead, Florida, where they raised their family and eventually ran a plant nursery as undocumented members of the community. But when police stopped them on Labor Day in September of this year while out shopping for groceries, they were immediately detained.

ICE said after initial detention Gaspar-Andrés was admitted to a Miami hospital and treated for alcohol withdrawal and later transferred to Texas detention.

An autopsy report from the El Paso county office of the medical examiner ruled Gaspar-Andres’s death as natural and attributed it to “complications of alcoholic hepatic cirrhosis”, an advanced stage of liver damage from long-term alcohol use.

The ministry of foreign affairs of Guatemala said it was informed by ICE about Gaspar-Andrés’s deteriorating health in early December.

“We requested that an investigation be conducted into the causes (of death), and the family has been advised regarding the repatriation process,” Ligia Reyes, the Guatemalan consul in Del Rio, Texas, said in an interview with Emisoras Unidas in Guatemala.

ICE and DHS officials did not give further details and clarification on the medical timeline and Gaspar-Andres’s treatment beyond what was outlined in ICE’s press release. The ICE office in El Paso directed the Guardian to the autopsy report.

A DHS spokesperson said in an email: “On December 3, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, died of natural causes related to alcoholic hepatic liver cirrhosis at the Hospitals of Providence East. ICE medical staff ensured he had constant, high-quality medical care.”

The email said of the Guardian’s inquiries about conditions at the camp at Fort Bliss and Gaspar-Andrés’s care: “This is fearmongering clickbait. As our brave ICE law enforcement is facing a more than 1150% increase in assaults against them, the Guardian is choosing to smear them with. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, access to showers, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members. It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody. This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives. No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States. Get a grip.”

Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso and Fort Bliss, has repeatedly written to Kristi Noem, the secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE, and Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE to complain about the camp at Fort Bliss.

In a letter on 19 December, Escobar said she had not received responses to two previous letters and she continued to have “grave concerns” about operations and conditions at the facility.

“I was angered to learn that since my last visit to Camp East Montana, ICE’s negligence has led to the first known death in custody at the facility,” she wrote.

She added of Gaspar-Andrés: “He repeatedly sought medical care throughout his stay; despite requiring care for increasingly severe symptoms, staff at Camp East Montana only transferred Gaspar-Andres to a local hospital once he was in critical condition.”

Escobar was among a group of US representatives that sued the administration over new limits and even blocks imposed on national lawmakers exercising their constitutional rights to observe ICE detention facilities.

Last week a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot bar members of Congress from making unannounced visits to such facilities.

Escobar further wrote in her 19 December letter that: “During my latest oversight visit to Camp East Montana on November 24th, I again heard from detainees that several of the issues that my staff and I have been aware of since August have not yet been adequately resolved. Issues persist with rotten food, inconsistent access to necessary medications, lack of regular access to recreational areas, and inconsistent laundry and cleaning services for uniforms.”

She said she believed the camp was understaffed and that detainees told her they were having difficulties receiving updates on their legal cases and were being held there for much longer than the 15 days intended for such a short-term facility.

Her letter asked: “What kind of meaningful oversight is being conducted at Camp East Montana?”

Experts have already warned that the federal watchdog system at DHS that oversees complaints about civil rights violations, including in immigration detention, has been gutted so thoroughly that it could be laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to “abuse people with impunity”. This as record numbers of people are being detained by ICE nationally.

Gaspar-Andrés died not long before national and local human rights and immigration advocacy groups accused Camp East Montana officers of abuse of detainees, in a letter to top ICE and Fort Bliss officials.

His health decline aligns with allegations in that letter that serious, even life-threatening conditions are not treated appropriately, Savannah Kumar, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, said.

“This raises serious concerns about whether Fort Bliss facility is on the brink of an additional death, especially with the pattern of medical neglect and no hospital visits that the detained people that we have spoken to have described to us,” she said.

Eunice Hyunhye Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project, said that medical care at Camp East Montana are “worse” than conditions cited in the organization’s Deadly Failures report, which found that 95% of detainees’ deaths between 2017 and 2021 were preventable.

Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said Gaspar-Andrés’ steep decline could not “happen overnight” and lamented her organization not being informed about his health condition, in order to take him to a hospital sooner.

“It definitely took a toll on our team … the fact that this gentleman could have used all the advocacy that we’ve poured into other people’s cases, to be able to get him out of the facility, just to go to the doctor and even die with dignity,” she said.