A Vietnamese man has died while under the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to the Associated Press, ICE officials confirmed the death of 47-year-old Huy Chi Tran on Tuesday at Banner Casa Grande Medical Center after being hospitalized for a week.
He was reportedly rushed to the hospital after being found unresponsive at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona on June 5.
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While Tran entered the U.S. as a legal permanent resident, he was placed in ICE custody on May 25 because of an earlier criminal conviction for aggravated assault. He was awaiting deportation when he fell ill and was transferred to the hospital.
Tran, whose cause of death has yet to be determined in an autopsy, is the seventh detainee to die in ICE custody since October of last year.
According to a bilateral agreement between Vietnam and the United States in 2008, “Vietnamese citizens are not subject to return to Vietnam” if they “arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995.”
However, ICE spokesman Brendan Raedy noted that as of December last year, there were 8,600 Vietnamese nationals in the United States who are subject to deportation. Raedy said that 7,821 of them “have criminal convictions.”
Based on ICE data, 71 Vietnamese people were deported to Vietnam last year, compared to 35 in 2016, and 32 in 2015. The figures, however, do not indicate when the deportees arrived in the United States.
