More details are emerging about the COVID-19-related death of a 57-year-old Salvadoran man who was held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center.
Carlos Escobar-Mejia had been living in the United States for 40 years but was unable to obtain legal status due to criminal convictions from the 1990s.
He’d been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since Jan. 10 when he was stopped in a car by Border Patrol in Chula Vista.
He was denied bond by an immigration court judge on April 15 because he was considered a flight risk.
Escobar-Mejia had hypertension and was on a list that ICE was ordered to compile by a federal judge of those considered medically vulnerable and eligible for immediate release.
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By the time he went on the list, however, he was already hospitalized. He died early Wednesday at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City.
“Despite what the government might say, and despite what the government did in this case, immigration detention is civil detention," said Monika Langarica, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties. "It’s not necessary, and it should have never been a death sentence for this person.”
The ACLU has been pushing ICE to expedite its release of detainees at Otay Mesa, to avoid even more deaths in the single largest outbreak of COVID-19 in immigration detention in the US.
“This person should not have been subject to death in immigration detention," Langarica said. "There was a way to get him out, ICE had discretion to release him and they didn’t do that.”
As of Thursday morning, there were 140 confirmed cases at the facility, which is holding 629 ICE detainees. Otay Mesa has not accepted new ICE detainees since April 2.
