Overview:
Emmanuel Cleeford Damas, a 56-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, died on March 2 at a Scottsdale hospital after a toothache went untreated at a CoreCivic-operated ICE detention facility in Florence, Arizona. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner has since confirmed he died from complications of a severe dental infection. His death is one of 52 in ICE custody since January 2025, renewing concerns about medical neglect in immigration detention.
This report was first published by the Tucson Sentinel.
By Paul Ingram
Emmanuel Cleeford Damas, 56, died on March 2 at a Scottsdale hospital weeks after he complained of a toothache while in custody at a private prison operated by CoreCivic under contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The preliminary report published Wednesday said Damas died from “complications of necrotizing mediastinitis with neck and retropharyngeal abscess in the setting of severe dental caries and periodontal disease.”
Necrotizing mediastinitis is a rare, life-threatening complication caused by an abscess in the deep issues behind the back of the throat.
Damas was being held at the Florence Correctional Center in the small central Arizona town that is the site of numerous prisons and detention centers, including those run by the state and CoreCivic.
He is among the 52 people who have died in ICE custody since the Trump administration began in January 2025, and among 18 people have died in custody just this year. Advocates have warned that should this pace continue, 2026 will be the deadliest year for immigration detainees on record.
“The medical examiner’s preliminary findings make this preventable tragedy even more horrifying. A toothache should never escalate into a fatal medical emergency, especially while someone is in government custody and entirely dependent on detention staff for access to care,” said U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva in a statement on Wednesday.
Grijalva has remained stridently critical of how ICE manages the detention of immigrants, and has repeatedly used her office to inspect facilities in Arizona, including the agency’s Florence Staging Facility last week.
“This raises serious and still unanswered questions about why Emmanuel Damas did not receive timely medical attention and why repeated requests for care were ignored. In March, my colleagues and I formally requested Mr. Damas’ medical records of care, complaints made to staff, and a full accounting of the circumstances leading to his death. To date, my office has not received the full records, transparency, or accountability that his family deserves,” Grijalva said.
“In Arizona and across the country, we continue to see a deeply disturbing pattern of medical neglect, delayed treatment, and systemic cruelty inside ICE detention centers. When the federal government detains someone, it assumes responsibility for their safety, health, and well-being. This is exactly why robust congressional oversight is necessary. Mr. Damas deserved to be treated with dignity. Instead, he died in federal custody from a preventable condition.”
Details of Damas’ case were provided to the Tucson Sentinel in March by Christine Ellis, a nurse who sits on the Chandler City Council who was contacted by the man’s brother.
On Feb. 12, Damas told family members he had a toothache, and was sent to the infirmary where a CoreCivic employee gave him ibuprofen, Ellis told the Sentinel. His pain continued and he was again given painkillers, even as his face swelled up and his pain worsened, Ellis said.
A few days later, on Feb. 19, Damas collapsed. Days later, officials at the hospital called his brother who said Damas faced a “grave situation” and that he’d been intubated and he needed surgery to combat the infection in the back of his mouth and his throat.
Later, while his brother struggled to find Damas and learn how he was doing, officials called and said the family needed to come to the hospital.
“If you can get here, get here,” they told Damas’ brother, Ellis said.
Days after Damas’ death, on March 6, ICE released a statement confirming details laid out by Ellis and family members.
ICE officials said Damas was arrested by Boston police for assault and battery on Sept. 14 and ICE officials took him from custody and held him under the Laiken Riley Act, which “mandates the detention of individuals with pending immigration cases who pose a risk to public safety.”
ICE said Damas was given a medical screening and staff “found no serious new medical issues but ensured he would keep receiving prescriptions for a preexisting medical condition.” He was flown to the Florence Detention Center on Sept. 27 where he stayed through January while appealing his case.
On Feb. 19, Damas reported shortness of breath and was “immediately sent” to a hospital in Florence, ICE said. He was later transferred to the John C. Lincoln Medical Center in Scottsdale and placed in the intensive care unit. On Feb. 22, medical staff continued to treat him for a massive infection, and diagnosed the 56-year-old man with “septic shock due to pneumonia.”
Hospital staff continued to treat him, including a surgery to remove damaged tissue in his right lung, and on Feb. 28, the medical liaison at ICE told Damas’ family they could visit him. By March 2, he was dead.
Under agency policy, ICE told the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the Haitian consulate about Damas’ death.
“ICE is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” the agency said in a statement. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay. All people in ICE custody receive medical, dental and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility; a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility; access to medical appointments; and 24-hour emergency care. At no time during detention is a detained alien denied emergency care.”
In March, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project said they were seeing an “alarming increase” in the number of people in ICE custody facing “potentially life-threatening medical neglect.”
This includes people who have “severe medical issues or chronic illnesses,” and the nonprofit legal aid group attributed the shift to ICE’s move to “detain everyone, regardless of their medical history, regardless of whether they can obtain the medical care they need in ICE custody, and regardless of how unsafe detention conditions would be for them.”
ICE moves to expand detention
During the first nine months of the Trump administration, ICE arrests quadrupled, including both street arrests and transfers from jails and prisons to ICE, according to data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project. While street arrests spiked, so did the number of people arrested without criminal conviction.
Further, the administration “roughly tripled the number of detention beds used for people arrested within the United States.”
“That capacity increase was a result both of new funding (for new detention centers and more beds in existing detention centers) and of a decrease in arrests at the border,” they said. “Once arrested, few were released.”
They noted that releases have declined, while deportations haven’t risen quickly. “Perhaps because of the lower release rate, voluntary departures (which are rare compared to removals) increased by 21 times,” they said, indicating many people gave up on their cases while in detention.
This year, ICE has quickly moved to rapidly expand its detention capabilities fueled by the massive influx of funding created after Congress passed H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The legislation laid out billions for border enforcement and immigration, including $45 billion to expand detention capacity, and tripling ICE’s detention budget to at least $14 billion per year.
The bill also gave ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations — the arm primarily responsible for arresting and deporting immigrants in the U.S. interior — nearly $30 billion. With the bill, ICE has funding for up to 135,000 detention beds through the end of the 2029 fiscal year, AILA said.
As part of this, ICE launched the Detention Reengineering Initiative, designed to “strategically increase bed capacity to 92,600 beds” using private and public facilities, including warehouses that could hold up to 10,000 people.
Meanwhile, the agency has sought to reopen a privately run prison near Marana for use as a detention center for hundreds of people taken into federal immigration custody in Southern Arizona.
‘Tremendously affecting’
The Trump administration moved swiftly to cancel or undermine a raft of protections for immigrants. Since his inauguration, more than 1.5 million immigrants either lost or will lose their temporary legal status, including work authorizations and deportation protections, State Newsroom reported.
Haitians have long had Temporary Protected Status (TPS) following a devastating earthquake in 2010, but Homeland Security’s Noem has repeatedly fought to strip away this safety leading to a recent court fight. On Feb. 3, Noem determined Haiti — a country where widespread gang violence continues — does not meet the conditions to give people in the U.S. protected status.
“Haiti’s TPS designation and related benefits were slated to terminate” on Feb. 3, DHS wrote, however “a single judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order staying the secretary’s TPS termination decision.”
“The judge did so even though the Department of Homeland Security recently prevailed twice in the U.S. Supreme Court in a similar case,” DHS officials said. “The Department of Homeland Security vehemently disagrees with this order and is working with the Department of Justice to determine next steps.”
Ellis said in March the Haitian community in the Phoenix area is small and relatively tight-knit, and over the past year, Haitian immigrants have tried to keep track of each other.
“It’s tremendously affecting,” Ellis told the Tucson Sentinel in March. “The government created a pathway for people to come here, and they were all doing the things they needed to, jumping through all the right hoops and vetting. They contribute, they stimulate the economy. Wherever Haitians landed, the community thrived.”
