An investigation is underway after a Vietnamese national died in the hospital on Saturday while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to an email seen by NBC News.
Tien Xuan Phan, 55, had been in custody at the ICE Processing Center in Karnes County, Texas, for seven weeks. A representative for the family did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the ICE email, Phan was taken to the local hospital, Otto Kaiser Memorial Hospital, on Friday for “evaluation due to seizures, vomiting, and unresponsiveness and was later airlifted to the Methodist Hospital Northeast for further evaluation.”
The cause of death was not stated and is now the subject of the investigation. ICE routinely conducts investigations into any detainee deaths and publishes them online after 90 days.
Phan was ordered to be removed from the country by an immigration judge on April 2, 2012, but an ICE official says they “failed to leave the U.S. as ordered.” Phan was then arrested in early June this year.
The Karnes facility in Texas has, at times, exceeded its contractual capacity of 928, and once held 1,311 detainees this fiscal year, according to data obtained by immigration researchers at Syracuse University.
NBC News contacted ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for further comment on whether Phan had a criminal record.
So far this year, eight detainees have died while in ICE custody, according to the agency’s own figures, including one other from Vietnam. The rest were from Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Honduras and Guyana.
In total, 12 detainees died in ICE custody in 2024, the figures show.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups said in a report last year that most of the deaths of people in ICE custody between 2017 to 2021 could have been prevented if the agency had provided proper medical care.
President Donald Trump’s administration has made arresting and deporting suspected illegal aliens a central policy of this term, with ICE officials told to make thousands of arrests every day.
