Haitian asylum seeker Emmanuel Damas, 56, died at a Scottsdale hospital March 2, while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, weeks after he began experiencing a painful tooth infection, the Arizona Daily Star reported Tuesday.
Here are six takeaways from the story:
- Damas' family members say staff at Florence Correctional Center — run by private, for-profit prison company CoreCivic — ignored Damas' pleas for dental care, giving him only ibuprofen for his pain, and failed to take him to a hospital until he collapsed. Damas' family is calling for an investigation into his "unnecessary" death, as is Chandler City Councilwoman Christine Ellis, a registered nurse who is Haitian-American.
- Damas is the 10th ICE detainee to die in 2026. The number of deaths in ICE custody is soaring under President Donald Trump's administration, with at least 32 deaths in 2025, triple the number in 2024.
- Damas entered the U.S. legally in 2024, after his brother Presly Nelson, who has lived in the U.S. for nearly three decades, sponsored him through a Biden-era parole program. Damas, whom ICE detained in Boston in September 2025, had a pending asylum claim, Nelson said.
- Legal advocates say medical care, and particularly dental care, in ICE detention centers is substandard; detainees often have to wait up to six months to get dental care, according to the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. Untreated dental infections can have deadly consequences, particularly if the infection spreads to the brain, heart or lungs.
- One of Damas' doctors told his family the infection in Damas' mouth likely spread to his lungs, causing pneumonia that ultimately turned into sepsis, Nelson said.
- As of Thursday, ICE and CoreCivic had not yet responded to the Star's requests for comment.
