An investigation is underway after a Vietnamese national died in the hospital Saturday in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to an email seen by NBC News.
Tien Xuan Phan, 55, had been in custody at the ICE Processing Center in Karnes County, Texas, for seven weeks. A representative for the family did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the ICE email, Phan was taken to the local hospital, Otto Kaiser Memorial Hospital, on Friday for "evaluation due to seizures, vomiting, and unresponsiveness and was later airlifted to the Methodist Hospital Northeast for further evaluation."
The cause of death was not stated, and it is now the subject of the investigation. ICE routinely investigates any detainee deaths and publishes the results online after 90 days.
An immigration judge ordered that Phan be removed from the country on April 2, 2012, but an ICE official said Phan "failed to leave the U.S. as ordered." Phan was arrested in early June this year.
The Karnes facility in Texas has, at times, exceeded its contractual capacity of 928, and it once held 1,311 detainees this fiscal year, according to data obtained by immigration researchers at Syracuse University.
NBC News contacted ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for further comment on whether Phan had a criminal record.
So far this year, eight detainees have died in ICE custody, according to the agency's figures, including one other from Vietnam. The rest were from Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Honduras and Guyana.
In total, 12 detainees died in ICE custody last year, the figures show.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups said in a report last year that most of the deaths of people in ICE custody from 2017 to 2021 could have been prevented had the agency provided proper medical care.
President Donald Trump's administration has made arresting and deporting suspected illegal aliens a central policy of this term, with ICE officials told to make thousands of arrests every day.
