He extracted it himself with his bare hands.
En instalaciones de detención migratoria distribuidas por al menos 33 estados de Estados Unidos, cientos de personas privadas de libertad bajo custodia del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas enfrentan lo que los tribunales federales documentan como un abandono médico sistemático. Desde enero de 2025, con la duplicación de la población detenida hasta superar las 75,000 personas, un sistema ya frágil ha cedido bajo el peso de su propia expansión. Las muertes en custodia alcanzan su nivel más alto en dos décadas, y el silencio institucional ante las denuncias revela algo más profundo que una falla administrativa: una pregunta sobre el valor que una sociedad asigna a los cuerpos que elige no ver.
- Detenidos se arrancan sus propias muelas, desarrollan infecciones necrotizantes y colapsan por emergencias cardíacas mientras sus solicitudes de atención médica quedan sin respuesta durante semanas.
- La población bajo custodia de ICE casi se duplicó en cuestión de meses, desbordando cárceles de condado, edificios reconvertidos y centros improvisados que nunca fueron diseñados para albergar personas de forma prolongada.
- Cientos de casos documentados en demandas federales describen negación sistemática de medicamentos para hipertensión, diabetes, epilepsia, VIH y depresión, con consecuencias que van desde sepsis hasta muerte.
- Las tasas de mortalidad en custodia de ICE son las más altas en veinte años, con 51 muertes confirmadas desde enero de 2025 y niveles de suicidio sin precedentes históricos.
- El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional declinó responder a los hallazgos periodísticos antes de su publicación, convirtiendo el silencio oficial en una forma de respuesta.
Un hombre albanés en Nuevo México se extrajo una muela con sus propias manos por el dolor insoportable. Una madre hondureña en Florida colapsó por una emergencia cardíaca después de que los guardias le negaran su medicación para la presión arterial. Un venezolano en Vermont desarrolló una infección bacteriana necrotizante porque el personal nunca lo trasladó a una cita médica programada. Estos casos no son excepciones: son parte de un patrón documentado en cientos de demandas federales presentadas en al menos 33 estados.
Una investigación conjunta de KFF Health News y The Associated Press, basada en miles de expedientes judiciales y más de 50 entrevistas, revela que las personas detenidas por ICE son rutinariamente privadas de medicamentos para enfermedades crónicas como diabetes, epilepsia, Parkinson, VIH e hipertensión. Las infecciones escalan hasta convertirse en sepsis. Los niveles de azúcar en sangre alcanzan niveles peligrosos. Los cánceres avanzan sin tratamiento.
Desde enero de 2025, cuando el presidente Trump inició su segundo mandato, la población detenida casi se duplicó, pasando de aproximadamente 40,000 a más de 75,000 personas. Las instalaciones que los albergan —cárceles de condado, edificios de oficinas reconvertidos, centros improvisados— nunca fueron concebidas para gestionar este volumen ni para ofrecer atención médica adecuada.
Según investigadores que publicaron en The Journal of the American Medical Association, la custodia de ICE es hoy más letal que en cualquier momento de los últimos veinte años. El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional confirmó 51 muertes bajo custodia desde el inicio de la administración actual, con tasas de suicidio en niveles sin precedentes. Cuando los periodistas solicitaron una respuesta oficial seis días antes de la publicación, la agencia guardó silencio.
An Albanian man in a New Mexico detention facility endured tooth pain so severe that he extracted it himself with his bare hands. A Honduran mother of two, held in Florida, collapsed from a cardiac emergency after guards refused to give her blood pressure medication. A Venezuelan detainee in Vermont developed a flesh-eating bacterial infection on his leg because medical staff never transported him to a scheduled appointment. These are not isolated incidents. They are three among hundreds of cases now documented in federal lawsuits filed across at least 33 American states, each one describing a pattern of medical abandonment inside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
The scope of the crisis became visible through an investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press, which analyzed thousands of court filings and interviewed more than 50 detainees, their families, and their lawyers. The legal documents, submitted under penalty of perjury, paint a consistent picture: people held by ICE are routinely denied medications for chronic diseases including hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, HIV, and depression. Requests for medical help go unanswered for weeks. Blood sugar levels spike dangerously. Infections worsen into sepsis. Cancers grow untreated. Detainees suffer seizures and organ failure.
The strain on the system has intensified dramatically since January 2025, when President Donald Trump began his second term. ICE detention populations nearly doubled, climbing from approximately 40,000 to more than 75,000 people by mid-January. The facilities holding them—county jails, repurposed office buildings, and improvised centers with names like the "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida—were never designed to manage this volume, let alone provide adequate medical care. The system, already fragile, began to crack.
Medical negligence allegations span the entire detention apparatus. They appear in county lockups and in facilities that were never intended to house people for extended periods. They appear in cases where detainees waited weeks for responses to medical requests, where infections festered without treatment, where cardiac patients were denied their medications. The human toll is measurable and mounting. Researchers writing in The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in April that ICE custody has become more lethal than at any point in the past two decades. The Department of Homeland Security disclosed that 51 people have died under ICE custody since Trump's second term began. Suicides have reached unprecedented levels.
When KFF Health News and The Associated Press asked the Department of Homeland Security to respond to their findings six days before publication, the agency declined to comment. The silence itself speaks to the scale of the problem—one that extends far beyond any single facility or administrator, implicating the entire structure of how the United States detains immigrants and, by extension, how it treats their bodies and their lives.
Citações Notáveis
ICE custody is now more lethal than at any point in the past two decades— Researchers in The Journal of the American Medical Association, April 2025
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment when asked to respond to the findings— KFF Health News and The Associated Press
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does medical care collapse so completely inside these facilities? Is it just understaffing?
It's more systemic than that. These aren't hospitals. Many are county jails or converted office buildings never meant for long-term detention. When you suddenly double the population, you don't just need more doctors—you need infrastructure, pharmacy systems, medical records. None of that scales overnight.
But people are dying. Surely there's accountability somewhere?
That's the question no one seems to want to answer. The DHS didn't respond to the journalists. There's no mechanism forcing these facilities to report what's happening in real time. You only find out through lawsuits, and by then months have passed.
What about the detainees themselves? Can they advocate for their own care?
They're in custody. They can request medical attention, but there's no guarantee anyone responds. One person waited weeks for a response. Another was never transported to a scheduled appointment. The power imbalance is absolute.
Is this new, or has it always been this way?
It's gotten worse. The system was already struggling, but the surge in detentions since January has pushed it past any functional threshold. Researchers say ICE custody is now more lethal than it's been in twenty years.
What happens to someone like the man who pulled out his own tooth?
He's still detained. His case is in federal court. But the tooth is gone, and the pain he was in—that's the reality of what happens when you're held in a place where no one will help you.