ICE Let Prisciliano Trejo Ricano Cough Blood in Detention—Then Released Him to Die Outside Its Custody Count
The 29-year-old begged for medical care inside the CoreCivic-run Stewart Detention Center, deteriorated into critical illness, and was released only after the medical emergency had overwhelmed him.
Prisciliano Trejo Ricano spent his 29th birthday inside an ICE detention prison telling the public that he was coughing blood morning and night. He had a severe sore throat, migraines, worsening pain, and no power to reach a hospital on his own. ICE had taken that power from him. CoreCivic controlled the prison where he was held, and every route to medication, medical evaluation, emergency transport, family contact, and outside intervention ran through the institutions holding him. Days later, Trejo was gravely ill in a Georgia hospital. ICE released him while he was critically ill, and he died on July 24.
“Here they treat you like a number or a placeholder,” Trejo wrote from Stewart Detention Center on July 10. He described coughing blood morning and night and said he still had not been treated or given medication. He wrote about crying, feeling helpless, and enduring what he called the worst feeling of his life. Those were not accusations reconstructed after his death. They were his own words from inside the prison while ICE and CoreCivic still controlled his access to care.
Trejo had lived in the United States since he was three years old and made his home in the Durham, North Carolina area. ICE arrested him in June and transferred him hundreds of miles away to the CoreCivic-run Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. That distance isolated him from the people who knew him, could recognize how quickly he was deteriorating, and would have pushed for urgent treatment. His family had to rely on calls and video chats while he described feeling sick, coughing blood, living with pain, and watching a bruise that would not heal. ICE did not merely confine Trejo. It placed him far from his support system while making him dependent on the detention system for survival.
Detention Watch Network said Trejo requested medical care on July 6 and was not taken to a hospital until July 13. By July 15, he was in a coma. DHS later produced a timeline saying he was seen for a cough and sore throat on July 10, given an over-the-counter sinus medication, treated again on July 13 with saline, an antibiotic, and pain relievers, and admitted to an emergency room on July 14. That timeline does not clear ICE or CoreCivic. It documents that a man reporting blood in his cough remained inside their detention system while the response failed to match the medical emergency unfolding in front of them.
A medical encounter is not adequate medical care. Handing cold medication to a man coughing blood does not erase the blood, and recording an appointment does not prove that staff responded with the urgency his condition demanded. ICE and CoreCivic controlled whether Trejo saw a doctor, whether specialists examined him, whether he received emergency testing, and when he could leave Stewart for a hospital. They held that control while his symptoms became impossible to dismiss. ICE and CoreCivic’s response amounted to medical neglect while Trejo’s condition deteriorated into a life-threatening emergency.
On July 16, Trejo’s family learned that he was in intensive care. They drove four to five hours to reach him and were initially stopped from seeing him because he remained in ICE custody. Even as he lay intubated and gravely ill, the government maintained control over who could enter his hospital room. His family had to wait while lawyers negotiated his release from the agency that had taken him far from home and controlled his access to treatment. ICE kept his loved ones outside while his condition worsened, then transferred responsibility to them after the medical emergency had overtaken him.
Doctors diagnosed Trejo with acute leukemia, an aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow. That diagnosis did not absolve the detention system that kept him confined while he reported coughing blood. It exposed the deadly cost of treating severe warning signs as something that could be managed inside a detention prison. Trejo needed urgent hospital-level evaluation, not a response calibrated to return him to confinement. ICE and CoreCivic controlled his access to care, failed to meet the emergency in front of them, and bear responsibility for the death that followed.
DHS’s response exposed the machinery of abandonment. The department said Trejo was released from ICE custody on July 16 and declared that once a person is no longer in custody, ICE is no longer responsible. That sentence reduced one continuous medical crisis to an administrative cutoff. Trejo became gravely ill under ICE control, entered the hospital after his condition deteriorated, fell into a coma, and was released while critically ill. ICE then treated the signature ending custody as though it had erased the institution’s responsibility for what happened before it.
ICE released Trejo while he was critically ill, moving the death that followed beyond its formal custody boundary. His body did not recover when the paperwork changed, and his leukemia did not reset when ICE handed responsibility to his family. The medical crisis that developed inside detention followed him into the hospital, but the agency record divided it into two events: illness while detained and death after release. Trejo’s body experienced one uninterrupted deterioration. ICE’s paperwork separated his suffering in detention from the death that followed.
CoreCivic cannot hide behind ICE, and ICE cannot hide behind CoreCivic. CoreCivic operated Stewart, controlled its internal systems, and claimed that medical staff addressed Trejo’s concerns when they were presented. ICE chose the facility, contracted with the company, retained custody authority, and remained responsible for what its detention system did to the people inside. Stewart has already accumulated a documented record of deaths, medical failures, and demands for accountability. Trejo’s death belongs inside that record, not outside it because ICE ended custody before his heart stopped.
DHS answered scrutiny of Trejo’s death by labeling him through his immigration status and criminal allegations. That language redirected attention from whether ICE provided urgent care toward whether the public considered Trejo worthy of receiving it. A detention agency does not earn the right to neglect a medical emergency because it can attach accusations to the person suffering. Coughing blood demanded urgent care whether the patient was free, jailed, documented, undocumented, charged, convicted, or accused. ICE took custody of Trejo’s body and therefore assumed responsibility for protecting his life.
Even while he was sick, Trejo used his final birthday message to speak about the other people imprisoned around him. He wrote that many were not criminals and had been taken while working or returning home. He was describing a detention machine that treated human beings as inventory, with one group arriving while another disappeared. His words about being reduced to “a number or a placeholder” became the final public record of what ICE and CoreCivic did to him. They confined him, isolated him, failed to meet the urgency of his symptoms, blocked his family while he was gravely ill, and relinquished custody only after the medical crisis had carried him from Stewart into intensive care.
Prisciliano Trejo Ricano did not disappear from ICE’s responsibility when he disappeared from its custody ledger. ICE held him while he coughed blood, and CoreCivic’s detention system neglected him while his condition worsened. His family reached him only after lawyers fought to remove the government’s control, and they received him when he was already critically ill. By ending custody before his life ended, ICE moved the death that followed beyond the official boundary of detention without erasing the harm that unfolded under its control. ICE released him to die outside its custody count, but his death remains part of what ICE detention did.
ICE detention turns human beings into numbers, buries medical neglect behind contractor walls, and narrows the public record through paperwork. Independent reporting keeps the people harmed by that system visible and preserves the truth institutions work to erase.
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Donald Trump killed that kid
This really makes me fuming. 😡 there responsible for anyone in these death camps. They’re inhumane and need to be shut down. There’s a difference between a detention center and one that abuses innocent people. There taking people with no record it’s a money making deal for the state. Where do they take the ones they removed when new ones came in?? People are beat, raped and fed bad food. It’s sickening and disgusting that people being treated this way. Trumps plan cruelty to humans.