U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has failed to meet a congressionally-mandated deadline to release more details about the in-custody death of a Chinese immigrant held at an Imperial County detention center in late September.
The deadline, established by Congress in a 2018 spending bill, gives the federal immigration agency 90 days to publish a report about what happened when someone dies while in custody.
Huabing Xie died on Sept. 29, according to ICE. In a press release, the agency said Xie had a seizure while being held at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico and died that afternoon at a nearby hospital.
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment last week. The agency previously declined to answer KPBS’ questions, citing an ongoing investigation.
The delay in releasing details about Xie’s death comes as the number of immigrants dying in federal detention continues to grow. In October, NPR reported that 2025 had become the deadliest year in decades for immigrants held by the U.S. government.
Since then, deaths appear to have risen sharply. In December alone, seven people died in ICE custody, according to Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who studies immigration enforcement.
Immigrants’ rights advocates said the delay is keeping crucial information from reaching the public, local officials and members of Congress who could choose to investigate further.
“It is quite disturbing,” said Jesse Franzblau, a policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “Particularly as they are simultaneously expanding the detention system to far larger than we have ever seen before.”
ICE has to meet certain requirements when someone dies in their custody.
The agency is supposed to immediately report the death to several federal watchdogs and let the public know within 48 hours, according to a February 2025 internal policy memo.
Second, ICE is supposed to investigate how the person died. The agency said online it conducts a series of internal medical reviews and oversight investigations, which are eventually sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Under requirements passed by Congress in 2018, the agency then has 90 days to publish a report on the death. That document, called a “Detainee Death Report,” provides a brief summary of the person’s medical history and the circumstances that the government says led to their death.
Although those reports are often very limited in scope and detail, Franzblau said they are an important first step towards greater transparency.
“The value is to incentivize increased scrutiny,” he said. “For Congress to then use that to push further and to expose the actual facts behind the death in custody.”
The last time ICE released a report was for Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a former-DACA recipient who was being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County and died just one week before Xie.
In the Imperial Valley, the missed deadline is raising continued questions about the quality of medical care at the detention center.
Weeks after Xie’s death, Management and Training Corporation (MTC) — the private prison company that runs the facility — posted a job online seeking a doctor to provide emergency medical aid and “monitor all potential catastrophic illnesses.”
Marina Arteaga, an organizer with the advocacy group Imperial Liberation Collaborative, said ICE has, since last summer, barred immigrants’ rights advocates from visiting detainees inside the local detention facility.
Arteaga said her organization has been able to communicate with several detainees through family members, but they have not been able to get updates on conditions inside the facility.
After Xie’s death, Arteaga and other local activists asked the Imperial County Public Health Department to use their state-granted powers to inspect the facility. The county still has not agreed to do an inspection, she said.
“We should be having oversight in the detention center,” she said. “We’re talking state-level, federal-level, county-level. And there hasn’t been any.”
Arteaga also emphasized that Xie had no known criminal record and had been released on an order of recognizance after his initial arrest along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023.
“What was the most preventable way to avoid this was having him released,” Arteaga said. “There was no need for him to be detained.”
