Visit Follows the Death of Haitian Asylum Seeker Emmanuel Damas in ICE Custody
PHOENIX– Today, Representative Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) conducted an oversight visit of the Florence Correctional Center. Her visit comes after the death of Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian asylum seeker who died after reportedly being denied adequate medical care while in ICE custody after complaining about a toothache to the Florence Correctional Center facility staff.
This was Ansari’s fifth oversight visit to a detention facility in Arizona.
“I visited the Florence Correctional Center to conduct an oversight visit following the death of Emmanuel Damas. To my surprise, I was met by CoreCivic’s private legal counsel and denied the ability to speak with detainees,” said Rep. Ansari. “This is unacceptable. I will be returning next Friday. No one should die under these horrific conditions, and I will continue demanding answers about what happened.”
Transcript of Ansari’s remarks following her oversight visit:
I just stepped out of the Florence Correctional Center here in Arizona, and what I saw was absolutely appalling.
We came here today because just a couple of weeks ago, a 56 year old man named Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian asylum seeker had a toothache here in this facility, and just a couple of weeks later, because of neglect and lack of proper medical care, he died by sepsis at a Scottsdale hospital.
We came here today to demand answers and to conduct an oversight visit. I've written to ICE about this tragedy and have not received a response.
We came here, as you all know, ICE and DHS under Kristi Noem have made it nearly impossible for Members of Congress to do our jobs of conducting oversight, so we followed all of their outrageous protocols, requesting this visit over a week in advance, getting the right privacy release forms, jumping through hoops, even as Congressional Representatives to do our jobs.
We were greeted here today by more than 20 people, including the private counsel of CoreCivic.
CoreCivic is one of the two major private prison companies that is making billions of dollars from the Trump Administration's mass deportation agenda.
CoreCivic happens to run the Florence Correctional Center.
So I thought it was very interesting that the private counsel was here today in the conference room with us, and as I was asking very specific questions about what sort of medical facilities are available here, how many doctors are here, what the protocol is if somebody gets sick. And specifically asking questions about what happened with Emmanuel, there was extreme reluctance to answer any questions, especially from the private counsel of CoreCivic which I found very, very disturbing.
We also wanted to speak with a gentleman who had requested to speak with us. We had the privacy release form, and we were told that it would not be possible today, because allegedly, we were not within the 48-hour period.
We drove all the way from Phoenix here to get answers and to meet with this individual, I had to literally request and demand that I speak with one of these ICE agents bosses over the phone to try to make this interview and conversation happened today, he still said no.
We will be coming back here next Friday now to speak with this individual.
And I will be going back to the Eloy Detention Center, where my constituent, Yari is.
All of this is unacceptable. What is so glaring about everything happening is that it is very clear that there is so much cover up happening for the abuse and the neglect and the mistreatment of human beings inside these us, government run and private prison company run detention centers.
During my first oversight visit, I went to Eloy and spoke with 30 women without any of this nonsense and jumping through hoops and hoops and extra bureaucracy. Today, there were 20 people trying to present this picture-perfect image of this place, not answering any questions relating to Emmanuel's case, which was a tragedy.
And one final thing that I just want to know about today, we asked about the investigation that will be happening. They say an investigation will start later this month, which is again unacceptable when this tragedy has occurred.
We asked about how they notified the family, because my team spoke with Emmanuel's brother about all of this, and they've heard nothing. They don't know when an investigation is happening. They don't even know how it got to this point where their brother's toothache led to his death because of ICE.
We will not stop until there's full accountability for this. Emmanuel is one of dozens of people who has died in ICE custody since the beginning of Trump 2.0, and we will not stand for it.
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