A Haitian asylum seeker who spent months inside an Arizona ICE detention facility has died after his family says a painful tooth infection went untreated until it was too late.
According to ABC News, Emmanuel Damas, 56, died Monday at a hospital after first reporting severe tooth pain weeks earlier while being held at the Florence Correctional Center, according to his brother Presly Nelson.
Nelson said his brother alerted medical staff at the detention center in mid February about a worsening toothache, but was never sent to a dentist for treatment. The untreated infection eventually became serious enough that Damas required hospitalization, where he later died.
Nelson believes staff at the facility failed to take his brother’s complaints seriously, even though the issue was medically treatable.
“As a country — I’m an American now — I think we can do better than that,” Nelson said.
Damas’ death adds to a growing list of fatalities in federal immigration detention facilities this year. He is among at least nine people who have died while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2026.
Following Damas’ death, Chandler City Council member Christine Ellis said the family contacted her seeking help. Ellis, who is Haitian American and works as a registered nurse, said the situation raised serious concerns about medical care inside detention facilities.
“As a medical person, I am absolutely appalled that there were medical-licensed people that were working there and allowed those things to happen,” Ellis said. “It does not make sense to me.”
Records from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office listed Damas’ official cause of death as pending.
Damas had been taken into ICE custody in September and was later transferred to the medium security Florence Correctional Center, where he remained for several months after his asylum request was denied.
The facility is operated by CoreCivic, a private corrections company, which referred questions about the case to ICE.
