For second time in two days, immigration detainee in Georgia dies

May 17 (UPI) -- For the second time in two days, a man detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Georgia has died, officials said Wednesday.

Indian national Atulkumar Babubhai Patel, 58, was pronounced dead Tuesday after being hospitalized for shortness of breath. He died of complications from congestive heart failure, ICE said.

"ICE is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody and is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident, as it does in all such cases," the agency said Wednesday in a statement, adding fatalities in ICE custody are "exceedingly rare."

Patel is the eighth detainee to die in ICE custody since October and the second in two days in Georgia.

On Monday, Panamanian national Jean Jimenez-Joseph, 27, died at an immigration detention center in Stewart County, more than 100 miles southwest of Atlanta. He was found with a sheet around his neck in his solitary confinement cell, ICE said, where he had been isolated for 19 days.

Patel and Jimenez are among more than 170 people who have died in U.S. immigration detention centers since 2003, according to the Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement.

"The cost of our current immigration detention system in both dollars and lives cannot be justified," said Christina Fialho, one of CIVIC's co-founders.

President Donald Trump's administration has ramped up immigration enforcement. Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, ICE has arrested 41,318 people known or suspected of being in the country illegally -- a 37.6 percent increase over the same period in 2016.

Patel was detained May 11 because he did not have the necessary immigration documents when he arrived on a flight from Quito, Ecuador, ICE said. He was hospitalized two days later when a nurse detected his shortness of breath during a medical screening.

"All individuals who enter ICE custody receive a comprehensive medical screening within 12 hours," ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said. Patel "was promptly identified as needing additional medical care and transferred to the appropriate location, which shows that ICE is fully committed to ensuring individuals in its custody receive all appropriate medical treatment."