The list, which The New York Times obtained from the government through a Freedom of Information Act request, demonstrates ICE's lack of accountability when it comes to the well-being of the men, women and children charged to its care:

But errors and omissions on the list made it difficult for The Times to confirm the identities of many whose deaths had not previously come to public attention, to find out why they died, or to locate relatives.

 

Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides, 14 as the result of various cardiac ailments and 9 related to H.I.V. and AIDS, the list includes cryptic causes of death like “unresponsive” and “undetermined.” The list does not mention the immigrants’ nationalities or where they lived in the United States. Some names and birth dates appear garbled.

 

For example, No. 39 on the list is Reinaldo Prado-Arencilia, who died in a Houston hospital after an “unwitnessed arrest” in a privately run detention center. A nationwide database search turned up no one with that name, but found a person named Reinaldo Prado-Arencibia who had lived in Florida. No. 18, N. Enriquez-Betancourt, is missing a first name. The birth date provided for No. 27, Yvel Fils-Aime, would have made him 48 when he died, but a newspaper obituary reported that a 29-year-old named Yvel Filsaime died on the same day in 2004, in the same place in Virginia. On Friday, immigration authorities confirmed that the birth date on the list was incorrect. Mr. Filsaime was born Nov. 2, 1975, they said, not Oct. 3, 1956.

 

The list does not say where two of the detainees were being held, but it does provide locations for the others. It shows that 38 percent of the detainees were held in centers operated by county or local governments, and 27 percent in those run by the federal government. Privately run centers had 32 percent of the deaths, even though they housed only 19 percent of detainees over all, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

For a system so concerned about these immigrants' ability to document their right to live in our country, the government has failed miserably in documenting the circumstances of their deaths.

The New York Times has a resource page with more documentation and a video about one detainee's death. The newspaper  first covered deaths in immigrant detention last year in a story that profiled some of the people included on this list. 

To learn more about immigrant detention and find out how to take action, watch this video. The National Immigrant Justice Center has also started posting videos of interviews with immigrant detainees discussing the lack of medical care they experienced while they were in ICE custody.