July 25 (UPI) -- A 44-year-old Mexican national died while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Wednesday afternoon in Georgia.
ICE confirmed that Pedro Arriago-Santoya died from an apparent heart attack and other complications. Arriago-Santoya first complained of stomach pains Saturday afternoon while at the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Ga. A nurse practitioner assessed him, and he was transported via ambulance to Southwest Georgia Regional Hospital in Cuthbert, Ga.
He was transferred Monday to Piedmont Midtown Medical Center, where he went into cardiac arrest. Doctors used CPR and a defibrillator. His pulse and oxygen levels were restored and he was placed on a ventilator in the ICU.
He remained comatose until Wednesday afternoon when he went into cardiac arrest again at 2:40 p.m. Medical staff performed CPR but he died at 3:10 p.m.
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"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," ICE said in a statement. "Fatalities in ICE custody, statistically, are exceedingly rare and occur at a small fraction of the rate of the U.S. detained population as a whole."
Arriago-Santoya was taken into ICE custody April 24 in Appling County, Ga., after he'd been arrested for public drunkenness and probation violations. He had a previous disorderly conduct conviction in Chatham County, Ga.
On June 6, an immigration judge ordered him removed from the U.S. back to Mexico. He was awaiting removal when he died.
He's the seventh individual to die in ICE custody in the 2019 fiscal year.
