A Cuban migrant died in solitary confinement at an immigration detention facility in Texas, and a medical examiner has ruled the death a homicide caused by asphyxia. This is not an isolated incident but part of a pattern of deaths and abuse within Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody that demands immediate action.
ICE detention facilities have become sites of preventable tragedy. When people die in custody from homicide, it reveals fundamental failures in oversight, accountability, and the basic duty to protect human life. Solitary confinement itself is widely recognized as a form of psychological torture, yet ICE continues to use it extensively. The circumstances surrounding this death raise serious questions about whether detention is necessary at all for people awaiting immigration proceedings.
I am asking you to support legislation that redirects funding away from ICE detention and enforcement operations toward community-based alternatives to detention. These programs have proven more effective, more humane, and significantly less costly than incarceration. Studies show that alternatives to detention achieve compliance rates above 90 percent for immigration court appearances while costing a fraction of what taxpayers spend on detention beds.
The current system is not making our communities safer. It is taking lives. Every dollar spent on ICE detention is a dollar that could fund legal representation, case management, and support services that actually help people navigate the immigration system without the trauma and danger of incarceration.
This death in Texas should be a turning point. I urge you to co-sponsor any legislation that reduces ICE's detention budget and reallocates those resources to proven alternatives. Accountability requires more than investigations after people die. It requires fundamentally changing how we approach immigration enforcement to prioritize human dignity and life.
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