The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Indian migrant, age 57, dies during Georgia ICE detention
He was third foreign national to die in custody this year.
A Georgia immigrant detainee has died while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Jaspal Singh, an Indian national, had spent over nine months in detention at the Folkston ICE Processing Center near the Florida border before dying on April 15, at 57.
The cause of Singh’s death is unknown, with the results of an autopsy still pending, federal authorities said. Singh passed away at the Southeast Georgia Health System’s Camden Campus in St. Mary’s, Georgia.
“ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” the agency said in a statement. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.”
Singh entered the U.S. legally in 1992, but was ordered deported by an immigration judge roughly six years later. In June 2023, border officials arrested Singh after he’d reentered the country illegally at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol then transferred custody of Singh to the Atlanta ICE field office, and he was detained in Folkston.
Singh’s death makes him the third foreign national to have passed away while in immigration detention this year. Including Singh, 11 Georgia ICE detainees died in custody since 2017, according to government data.
The last time an Indian ICE detainee died in Georgia
came in 2017, when Atulkumar Babubhai Patel, 58, was apprehended at Hartsfield-Jackson because he did not possess the necessary immigration documents. He was detained by immigration officials at the Atlanta City Detention Center, and shortly thereafter began exhibiting symptoms of heart failure.
A review conducted by ICE found medical care and health services received by Patel in custody “were delivered outside the safe limits of practice, which either directly or indirectly contributed to his death.”
Record levels of Indian migrants are attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. on foot.
During the 2023 fiscal year, border agents encountered nearly 97,000 Indian nationals trying to enter the country between official ports of entry. Three years’ prior, that number was under 20,000.
According to experts interviewed by NBC News, visa backlogs and the oppression of minority communities in India are among the factors behind the surge in Indian illegal immigration to the U.S. Singh was a Sikh.
‘ICE detention is a South Asian issue’
Immigrant rights’ advocates say Singh’s death is an indictment of the immigrant detention system, which has given rise to various human rights complaints in Georgia, including widely shared reports of detained women undergoing unneeded gynecological procedures.
Folkston ICE Processing Center is a for-profit facility operated by the GEO Group, a Florida-based company.
“We express our condolences to Mr. Singh’s family members and loved ones. We take the safety and wellbeing of those entrusted to our care with the utmost seriousness,” a spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a statement. “At all of the ICE Processing Centers where GEO provides health care services, individuals are provided with around-the-clock access to medical care.”
Maura Finn is a senior lead attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“We are horrified by the loss of Jaspal Singh while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the GEO Group,” she said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to his family and loved ones as they face this cruel injustice.”
“We urge the public and federal and state leaders to end the costly and unnecessary detention of immigrants in favor of a more welcoming, sensible and humane immigration process,” she added.
Although President Biden has yet to follow up on a campaign promise to stop using private facilities for immigrant detention, his administration has put greater emphasis on digital surveillance programs to monitor migrants ahead of court dates.
For advocates, Singh’s identity as a Sikh triggered memories of past mistreatment of Sikhs by immigration authorities, including requests to remove their turbans, a sacred religious headwear. In 2018, a group of Indian Sikhs detained at Folkston held a hunger strike to protest detention conditions, and alleged they suffered retaliation by prison officials as a result.
“We are deeply concerned about the circumstances of Mr. Singh’s death in light of this history of FIPC violating the human rights of Indian nationals and Sikhs in particular,” said Meredyth Yoon, litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta.
Added Shelly Anand, executive director of the Sur Legal Collaborative, an immigrant and workers’ rights nonprofit based in Atlanta: “ICE detention is a South Asian issue, and Jaspal Singh’s death exemplifies that those who are most vulnerable and marginalized within our community face the harshest and cruelest forms of immigration enforcement.”
Eight months after a Fulton County grand jury handed up an indictment accusing former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 election, Arizona charged many of the same people for illegally seeking to reverse Joe Biden’s victory. Here are how the two cases compare. Trump’s role
In the Fulton case, Trump was indicted on 13 felony counts, including a racketeering charge for allegedly overseeing the alleged conspiracy to unlawfully overturn Georgia’s election results. Three of those counts have been dismissed and there are pending challenges to a number of others. Earlier this month, the judge overseeing the Fulton case rejected a push from Trump to dismiss some charges on First Amendment grounds.
In the Arizona case, Trump was not charged. But he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, the same label given to then-President Richard Nixon when some of his top aides were indicted for the Watergate scandal. The Maricopa County indictment said Trump — as “Unindicted Co-conspirator 1″ — spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election and was “unwilling to accept that he lost the election,” even though he had confided to an unidentified White House staffer that he had lost.
Indicted allies
Several of Trump’s closest aides and allies in 2020 now stand indicted in both cases, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and onetime New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Attorney John Eastman and operative Mike Roman also face criminal charges in both states.
Fulton previously had been unique for bringing criminal charges against members of Trump’s inner circle. ( Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case, for example,
only charges Trump, while describing six unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators.) The Arizona indictment notably includes similar charges to those levied in Georgia, including alleged conspiracy, forgery and fraud.
Trump electors
The Arizona case in some ways goes further than the Fulton case, particularly in its focus on the Republicans who submitted documents to Congress falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors for Trump, even though Biden had won the state. The grand jury indicted 11 Republicans who participated in that ceremony in Arizona; the Georgia case only charged three of the 16 GOP activists who participated. (Officials in two other swing states won by Biden, Michigan and Nevada, also have brought charges against
GOP electors.)
The Arizona grand jury also indicted top Trump legal aide Boris Epshteyn, who was not charged in Georgia but was listed as one of 30 unindicted co-conspirators. Fulton prosecutors have instead suggested they see Epshteyn as a witness.
Jenna Ellis
Attorney Jenna Ellis, once a self-proclaimed member of the Trump campaign’s “elite strike force team,” was indicted in the Fulton case and charged with two felonies: racketeering and trying to get state legislators to unlawfully appoint presidential electors who’d cast votes
for Trump.
In October, a tearful Ellis pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She said she no longer believed the claims of election fraud she spread following the 2020 election when she acted as Trump’s legal adviser. As part of her plea deal, Ellis agreed to testify for and cooperate with Fulton prosecutors moving forward.
Ellis also was among those indicted in the Arizona case. She and others are accused of pressuring “officials responsible for certifying election results to encourage them to change the election results,” including the governor, the legislature and the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, The New York Times reported.