Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wants an immediate and full congressional investigation into the latest death of a detainee in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration.
The detainee, a 75-year-old Cuban national named Isidro Perez, was reported to Congress by ICE officials, with news on the incident saying that "the death appears to have been caused by a heart attack."
That explanation didn't suffice for Vance.
"'Appears' is doing a lot of heavy, lifting here given what we know about how other detainees, including a woman who lost her baby in ICE detention have experienced," wrote Vance. "Especially with ICE trying to prevent Congress from oversight, there should be a full investigation into this."
This follows efforts by members of Congress to gain access to ICE facilities for inspection, including several lawmakers protesting at a private detention facility set up in Newark, New Jersey, despite local ordinances prohibiting such detention centers.
One of the lawmakers at that protest, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), is being criminally prosecuted by the Trump administration.
ICE detention conditions are among several elements of Trump's mass deportation scheme that have triggered outrage, along with his administration's efforts to summarily remove people to war-torn third countries the detainees have no connection to, and what critics have described as disappearances of law-abiding immigrants without due process.