Man who begged for ICE release dies of COVID days after he’s freed, lawyers say
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Martin Vargas Arellano begged a U.S. judge to be released from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Adelanto, California, saying he wanted to “lead a quiet life and be at peace.”
Arellano, 55, was part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in March 2020 asking that ICE detainees be released because “their health conditions place them at serious risk of life-threatening illness or death” due to COVID-19.
Arellano, who had diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C, according to the lawsuit, was released from ICE days after he suffered a stroke on March 3, NBC News reported. Arellano was in the hospital and died on March 8 due to complications from COVID-19, according to the publication.
He had been infected with COVID-19 in December.
ICE said in a statement to McClatchy News that it “does not comment on pending litigation.”
Jessica Bansal, an attorney for the ACLU, said Arellano’s requests were denied multiple times due to his criminal record, according to NBC.
“They rejected these requests every time until he was about to die,” Bansal said.
Margaret Hellerstein, Arellano’s immigration attorney, told the San Bernardino Sun that she thinks Arellano’s death was “intentionally covered up” by ICE to “under-count” the number of detainee deaths.
“There were all these separate class-action lawsuits where (Arellano) was a class member and was at a very high risk for COVID, and they declined to release him because they said he was a threat to public safety,” Hellerstein said.
Arellano was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor under 14 in 1985 when he was 19 and convicted of domestic violence in 1993, according to the Sun.
“His serious crimes were more than 30 years ago. He was gravely disabled. He used a wheelchair much of the time. He was on insulin. This was not somebody who was capable of a violent offense,” Hellerstein said.
Hellerstein told the Los Angeles Times that she wasn’t notified about Arellano’s release and she filed a missing persons report before learning of his death because she was concerned that he was out on the street.
U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. in California has ordered ICE to explain why Arellano was released by the agency days before his death and why his family and attorneys weren’t notified that he had died, Law360 reported.
“Based on the notice of death, it appears that the government actively concealed the seriousness of Mr. Arellano’s condition, and his subsequent death, from his counsel and the court by reporting that Mr. Arellano was released from detention on March 5, 2021,” Hatter said.
