When Estefani Andrade spoke over video last Friday to her father, who was in an immigration detention center in Texas, he looked pale and unwell, she said. The next day, he was found unconscious in his cell, and she was later told he died.
The man, Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, who had a heart condition, diabetes and high blood pressure, had complained to his daughter for months about the lack of medical care at the Rio Grande Processing Center, a detention center in the border city of Laredo, Ms. Andrade said.
“He was coughing. He didn’t look like himself,” Ms. Andrade said. “I asked if she was OK. He said, ‘they don’t listen to me.’”
“We want to know why this had to happen,” she added.
The death of Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias, 56, was confirmed Monday by Henry Cuellar, a Democratic member of the U.S. House who represents Laredo and was briefed on the matter by immigration officials.
Ms. Andrade said her father was given medications to treat his illnesses only during his first weeks in detention. She said her father complained that he could not receive additional medicine until it was approved by a doctor.
But ICE said in a statement that Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias had received “proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals.”
“He had a documented medical history of diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety,” ICE added.
Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias’s death has raised more questions about the medical care provided at the detention centers in Laredo and around the country.
Since President Trump returned to office, immigrants and activists have described haphazard health care and poor conditions at detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The number of immigrants deaths in ICE custody has nearly doubled under the Trump administration.
Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias is the second detained migrant to die in similar circumstances at an immigration detention center in Laredo this year. ICE had said that Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez, 63, of Mexico, was found unresponsive on June 19 while detained at the Webb County Detention Center, which is also in Laredo. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mr. Cuellar said in an interview Monday that Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias, who had been detained since June, was found unresponsive at around 10 a.m. on Saturday during a security check inside his cell. The staff at the detention center performed CPR and called 911, Mr. Cuellar said. An autopsy report is pending, Mr. Cuellar said.
The Rio Grande Processing Center is operated by a private company called the GEO Group, which referred questions to ICE.
Mr. Cuellar also said that the legal status of Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias was unclear. Immigration officials described him to Mr. Cuellar as a “citizen of Mexico,” he said. But in conversations with the man’s family and Mexican consulate officials, Mr. Cuellar was told that the man was a legal U.S. resident.
“We need to have transparency,” Mr. Cuellar added. “We need to get information as quickly as possible.”
ICE said it had determined that Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias had obtained legal status “through fraudulent means” because he failed to disclose his prior arrest during the review process. He was in the process of being removed before an immigration judge when he died, ICE said.
Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias left Hidalgo, Mexico, as a teenager and settled in the Dallas area, Ms. Andrade said. He lived there for decades and had three children. He had been a U.S. legal resident for about 10 years and often traveled to Mexico and had no problem traveling to and from the United States as a legal resident, she added.
That changed in June, when he was detained coming back from Mexico by bus, she said.
Ms. Andrade said she believed that her father’s detention stemmed from an arrest more than two decades ago. In 2004, Mr. Andrade-Covarrubias, who painted apartments and townhouses, stole a ladder as payment from a client who Ms. Andrade said had refused to pay him for his work. He was arrested, but it was unclear he if was convicted in the case.
On Monday, his daughter was given his belongings and was trying to console her mother and two younger brothers.
“I have to be the strong one,” she said. “We have so many questions. He is not the only one to die like this.”
