A record year of deaths of people in ICE centers

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) just closed the year with the highest number of people killed under its surveillance.

Not as

, when 21 people lost their lives.

Official data shows that 20 people lost their lives in ICE centers during fiscal year 2019 (which runs from last October to September 30 of this year).

It is a

, when eight people died in service centers.

In fact, the new figure exceeds the accumulated official record of deaths in the centers throughout the Donald Trump administration, which was 24 until mid-2019.

The increase

 ICE has counted more than 6,000 infections in its immigration centers and a few weeks ago there were 800 infected people in detention.

Guards and employees have also been infected at immigration sites in places like Arizona.

File photo of people being held at the ICE detention center in Otay Mesa, San Diego.

It is one of the places where there was an outbreak of COVID-19.

People who died from coronavirus in ICE centers reportedly include Mexican Cipriano Chávez, 61, who was held in Georgia, and Guatemalan Santiago Batel Oxlaj, who was 34 years old.

[The secrets that ICE wants to hide, revealed]

Activists warn that there could be many more cases of infection in the centers, since they are closed spaces where many people are held in unsanitary conditions, but that insufficient tests are being carried out.

"ICE's handling of this crisis makes it clear how deeply indifferent [those in charge of the agency] are

" Andrea Flores, the deputy director for immigration policy in Mexico, accused in a statement. the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, for its acronym in English).

Flores indicated that immigration authorities "have made unnecessary and negligent transfers; they have refused to provide masks or tools for disinfection; they have failed to test detainees for COVID, and have increased the use of force."

Among the deaths this year there were also

[Doctor accused of alleged forced sterilizations at an ICE center will no longer see patients]

Like that of Choung Won Ahn, a 74-year-old man who took his own life in May.

According to his relatives, he was desperate, as his various requests to be temporarily transferred from the Mesa Verde center in California, for fear of contagion of COVID-19, were discarded.

Ahn had pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, that worsen the reaction to the SARS-CoV2 disease.

"Many of these deaths were preventable, unnecessary and a direct result of the [Donald] Trump administration's refusal to take basic measures to protect the health of the detainees," John Sandweg, who was director of ICE during the meeting, told EFE news agency. Barack Obama's mandate.

[Gustavo crossed the border just to meet his grandfather and the US deported him without warning.

The same happened to thousands of minors]

With information from EFE