• Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man, died Monday while being transferred between ICE detention facilities in Georgia, marking the 22nd death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this year, the agency said.
  • ICE said Arenas-Silva was found unresponsive on a transport bus en route to the Folkston processing center and that the suspected cause of death was cardiac arrest.
  • The Irwin County Detention Center, where he had been held, previously faced allegations of non-consensual gynecological procedures and medical abuse, with a 2022 Senate investigation finding that female detainees were subjected to excessive and unnecessary procedures.
  • The death occurred during a week in which three other people died in connection with immigration enforcement operations, including a man shot by ICE in Texas, a man shot by ICE in Maine, and a man struck by a semi-truck while fleeing agents in Florida.

Irwin County center had prior medical abuse allegations, Senate found

Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva entered the United States in 2021 and was encountered by border patrol officials in California days later, according to an ICE press release. An immigration judge in Atlanta ordered him removed to Venezuela in April. ICE officials arrested him last week during a “targeted enforcement action” in Dallas, Georgia, and detained him at the Irwin County Detention Center, a privately run facility in Ocilla, Georgia.

He was being transferred to the Folkston ICE Processing Center on Monday morning when he was found unresponsive on the transport bus. Staff called for medical assistance and transported him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, ICE said. The agency said the suspected cause of death was cardiac arrest.

MSI previously reported that Arenas-Silva died during transfer between Georgia detention facilities.

The Irwin County Detention Center began detaining immigrants again last year after its contract with ICE was terminated in 2021 by the Biden administration following a whistleblower complaint about alleged medical abuse by a nurse at the facility. In 2020, the facility became known for allegations that women detained there were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures. A 2022 investigation by a Senate subcommittee found that “female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures.”

Arenas-Silva’s death follows the late June death of Adrian Andreas Florian, an 85-year-old German man, who died in a hospital in ICE custody after being detained in Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security has increased its detention capacity and numbers since the second Trump administration entered office last year. In 2025, ICE reported 33 detainee deaths, the highest total in more than two decades. The number of deaths in ICE custody has increased since January 2025.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, raised the alarm about deaths in U.S. government immigration custody in late June and called for “prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations,” the Guardian reported.