A long-awaited autopsy report has confirmed that the death of Emmanuel Damas, a 56-year-old Haitian national who died in March after months in immigration detention in Arizona, was connected to severe dental problems — though the report also indicates the detainee twice declined recommendations to have problematic teeth extracted before his condition deteriorated, according to reporting by the Associated Press.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that Damas died from complications of a chest infection accompanied by abscesses in his neck and throat, with severe dental problems listed as a contributing cause, the AP reported Monday.
Damas was held at the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Center, a facility operated by the private corrections company CoreCivic on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, when his condition declined.
According to the AP, Damas’s death is one of at least 51 deaths recorded among detainees in ICE custody since President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025.
The AP reported that medical examiners have ruled the majority of those deaths to be from natural causes — but that experts have repeatedly observed that many such deaths involve conditions that would have been preventable with timely and effective medical care.
What makes Damas’s death distinctive, the AP reported, is the underlying cause: among the roughly three dozen detainee deaths for which medical examiner and coroner findings have been publicly released, Damas is the only one in which dental problems have been listed as a cause or contributing factor.
The Timeline of Medical Care — and Refused Treatment
According to the autopsy details obtained by the AP, Damas’s dental troubles were identified months before his death. A dental examination in October flagged that a tooth required extraction, and Damas was placed on a waiting list for the procedure.
When his appointment for the extraction came three months later, the AP reported, Damas declined the procedure, stating that the tooth was no longer causing him pain.
At a follow-up dental appointment in mid-February, the autopsy indicates Damas again declined a recommendation to have teeth removed. Within days of that appointment, his condition deteriorated rapidly.
According to the AP, when Damas complained of a sore throat and abdominal pain shortly thereafter, staff at the Florence detention facility instructed him to report to the medical unit. He declined.
On February 19, Damas was transported to a hospital for respiratory failure and later transferred to other facilities for a higher level of care. He died on March 2 at a hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, the AP reported.
The Family’s Account
In a statement provided to the AP, Raymond Audain, an attorney representing Damas’s family, said the autopsy confirms what the family has long believed: that Damas died as a result of an infection that originated with untreated tooth pain and spread through his head, neck, and chest.
According to Audain’s statement, Damas “begged prison staff for medical care on numerous occasions, including the night before he was hospitalized, but he was ignored.” The attorney attributed responsibility to both ICE and CoreCivic, the AP reported.
The Damas family is now weighing further legal action, though specific next steps have not been publicly announced, according to Presly Nelson, the younger brother of the victim, in an interview with CTN.
The Damas family also commissioned a private pathologist to conduct an independent autopsy, the AP reported, though Audain declined to share that report with the news agency.
The county’s findings, Audain said in his statement, support the family’s broader claim that Damas’s death was the result of a failure to provide basic medical care during his detention.
CoreCivic Responds
In a statement to the AP, CoreCivic, the private corrections company that operates the Florence facility, said it takes detainee deaths seriously but declined to address Damas’s case in detail, citing federal medical privacy laws.
“We are committed to providing safe, humane, and respectful care for everyone entrusted to us,” the company said in its statement, according to the AP. “We take seriously our obligation to adhere to all applicable federal detention standards and will continue to ensure that all detainees receive appropriate and timely medical attention.”
The AP reported that it left a message with ICE seeking comment on the autopsy report. The agency’s response had not been received as of the AP’s publication.
Damas’s death arrives amid mounting scrutiny of medical care standards within ICE detention facilities, the majority of which are operated by private contractors including CoreCivic and the GEO Group. Civil rights organizations, congressional Democrats, and immigrant advocacy groups have for years documented cases in which detainees have died from preventable conditions — including diabetes complications, infections, and untreated chronic illnesses.
The Haitian community, both in the United States and abroad, has been particularly affected by aggressive enforcement during the second Trump administration. The administration’s effort to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, and detention of Haitian asylum seekers and visa overstayers has expanded significantly across multiple states.
Source: Associated Press
https://ctninfo.com/?p=42879&preview=true
Note to Readers: This article was originally written and published in English. Versions in other languages are translations enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. While CTN strives for accuracy across all language editions, only the original English version should be considered authoritative. Caribbean Television Network (CTN) assumes editorial responsibility solely for the original English text and is not liable for translation errors, omissions, or misinterpretations that may appear in non-English versions.
