Salvadoran Man Dies in ICE Custody
Journalist Alejandra Falconi has a tragic scoop about Juan Francisco Martinez. Say his name and may be rest in peace.
WASHINGTON —
is reporting that a 48-year-old Salvadoran man has died in U.S. immigration custody, raising new questions about the treatment of detained migrants under the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.
Juan Francisco Martinez, arrested by federal agents at his home in Reno, Nevada, on August 9, was believed to be held at the Folkston D. Ray ICE Processing Center in Georgia, according to the agency’s detainee locator. But just days later, Martinez’s family was informed by the Washoe County Medical Examiner’s Office in Nevada that his body was at their facility.
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His wife, Alberta Gonzalez, who lives in a rural Guatemalan village and primarily speaks an Indigenous language, was told she would need to hire a mortician before being allowed to view the body. The family says it has not been provided a cause of death and is now pleading for consular officials and immigrant rights groups to intervene.
“This is a murder,” one relative told Franconi, who first documented the case in an August 17 post. “We are immigrants without papers, but that still doesn’t justify murder.”
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ICE has yet to respond beyond an automated acknowledgment of inquiries about what happened to Martinez while in custody. His family, meanwhile, is trying to repatriate his body to El Salvador for a proper burial.
The case underscores long-running concerns over secrecy, accountability, and medical care in the nation’s network of privately run immigration detention centers. Advocates warn it may be a grim sign of more fatalities to come.
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Doesn’t deported mean sent back, not detained in a shit hole infinitely ?
😡