Migrant in ICE facility taken off life support

An asylum- seeking migrant detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement was pulled off life support after his relatives said they requested that doctors continue the lifesaving measures.

More than a month later, the man’s body remains in the USA, his relatives said they have been given little information about his death, and his brother has twice been denied a visa to travel to the USA to identify the body and accompany it back home to Cameroon.

Nebane Abienwi, 37, a father of six who fled his country this summer, died Oct. 1 after suffering a “medical emergency” while being detained at the Otay Mesa

Detention

Center, a U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) facility in San Diego, according to ICE.

Abienwi’s youngest brother said he has been scrambling between U. S. embassies in South Africa and Cameroon, pleading for a visa to travel to California to get some answers.

He said he wants to make sure it’s really his brother’s body and to perform cultural rites on the body before the casket is sealed. He wants to know why doctors removed the ventilator that kept his brother breathing after he asked them to keep it in place until a relative could arrive.

“We did not approve that,” said Abienwi’s brother Akongnwi, who requested he be identified only by his last name out of fear his family would face repercussions in Cameroon. “One hundred percent, we did not.”

Akongnwi, speaking from a hotel room in Cameroon on Monday, said he spoke by phone with ICE officials several times Sept. 30, when they first called to say his brother had become critically ill and was on a ventilator. He said the ICE officials passed the phone to Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center officials, who explained that a ventilator was the only thing keeping his brother breathing.

Akongnwi said he shared the information with his brother’s wife and others in the family, and they all agreed Abienwi should be maintained on life support until a relative could be by his side.

In a statement, ICE said it was reviewing Abienwi’s death, as it does all other deaths in ICE facilities, to ensure that officials acted in accordance with all of its policies and standards.

Nebane Abienwi, an asylum- seeking migrant from Cameroon, died Oct. 1 in a California hospital while in the custody of U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.