A second immigrant has died while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Georgia, according to federal authorities.
Cambric Dennis, a 44-year-old Liberian national, died on May 21 at the at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus. The cause of death is still under investigation.
Dennis had spent over seven months in detention at the Stewart Detention Center in southwest Georgia, but he had been living in the U.S. since 1997, when he entered the country legally.
ICE first came into contact with him last year after he was convicted of an aggravated felony related to controlled substance trafficking and detained at state prison near Jackson, Georgia. He was transferred to Stewart in October and placed in deportation proceedings, pending a hearing before an immigration judge.
The outlet reported that Dennis was the second foreign national to have passed away in Georgia while under ICE custody this year, following the death of Jaspal Singh in April.
Jaspal was an Indian national who died after spending months in detention at Georgia's Folkston ICE Processing Center near the Florida border.
Ten other ICE detainees have died in custody in Georgia since 2017, according to government data.
"At least 12 migrants have perished at this deadly ICE prison. When is this administration going to shut it down?," wrote Azadeh Shahshahani, legal director of the immigrant rights organization Project South, in her X account.
Health and life conditions in ICE detention centers have been under scrutiny also in Louisiana this month after migrant advocates in the southern state announced that a 33-year-old man from Senegal who died while under ICE custody in 2023 had been sick for months, with his condition deteriorating at the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield.
During the first days of May, advocates held a small candlelight vigil outside ICE's New Orleans field office for him and others who have died in ICE custody, calling for the federal government to end it.
That facility has for years been the subject of complaints about inadequate medical care, filthy accommodations and mistreatment of detainees, and this week the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a complaint on behalf of a woman in Louisiana who says has for over a year been experiencing "severe abuse and life-threatening conditions," including sexual assault.
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