Family seeks answers in death of immigrant after detention

LOS ANGELES — A 27-year-old man died in a California hospital after he suffered a brain hemorrhage while detained by U.S. immigration authorities, his wife said Wednesday, demanding to know what caused his injury and whether he received appropriate medical care in custody.

Melissa Castro said she was called Feb. 8 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official and told that her husband had a “passing out episode” while in the custody of detention officials in Adelanto, Calif., and had been taken to the hospital.

Castro, who had delivered the couple’s baby five days earlier, said she found Jose Luis Ibarra Bucio in an intensive care unit and in a coma from which he never awoke.

Castro said she wants to know what happened to her husband, who was young and had no prior health problems. She said she heard from doctors that he had been airlifted from another hospital.

She said she also wants to know why ICE had him shackled to his hospital bed in a coma and signed papers releasing him from custody two weeks later.