Medical staff at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center repeatedly failed 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe before he died in custody, according to a mortality review by investigators with ICE’s Health Services Corp.
The former DACA recipient died from complications related to a pelvic abscess while in ICE custody on September 22, 2025, a coroner’s report states, after being detained for nearly a month inside the Adelanto detention center, federal authorities said.
At least 27 detained people died after medical care failings while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention nationwide, according to dozens of ICE death reports briefly published by the agency last week.
This publication reviewed copies of the records obtained by Project Salt Box, an independent publication that focuses on ICE’s detention system, before the ICE website removed them.
Ayala-Uribe’s death was “very preventable,” said Dr. Katherine Peeler, an assistant pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and medical advisor with Physicians for Human Rights who reviewed the mortality report. She has researched conditions inside ICE detention centers for about eight years.
The report on Ayala-Uribe’s death comes as the Adelanto ICE Processing Center faces ongoing scrutiny over alleged inhumane conditions, including claims of inadequate medical care.
At least five people have died after being detained at Adelanto in the second Trump administration, four of which were connected to substandard medical care, according to the California Attorney General’s office 2026 report on ICE detention centers in the state.
In a request for comment on the findings about Ayala-Uribe’s death, an unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that detained people receive comprehensive medical care from the moment a person enters ICE custody.
“This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives,” the spokesperson said.
ICE’s mortality review committee found that the care the Adelanto ICE facility provided to Ayala-Uribe “deviated beyond safe limits of practice.”
Here’s how the Adelanto ICE facility failed Ayala-Uribe, according to the mortality review:
- Medical staff did not thoroughly evaluate him or complete wellness checks
- Nurses did not adequately tell the on-call provider about his medical status
- Medical staff did not effectively transfer care from one staff member to another
- Medical staff did not consistently respond to Ayala-Uribe’s complaints in a timely manner
- Ayala-Uribe did not receive all of his medications
- Medical staff did not adequately document all of his care in a timely fashion or note all discussions related to his care
Adelanto’s lack of staffing hindered their ability to provide their patients medical care in a timely manner, the report states.
Jesus Arias, the lawyer representing Ayala-Uribe’s family, said the findings aren’t surprising. He’s also representing two other families whose loved ones died after being detained at Adelanto.
“They don’t care about the people that have symptoms or conditions that could be easily resolved until it’s way too late. … If you’re sick in Adelanto, you’re at risk of dying,” he said.
“This was not supposed to happen to Ismael,” he said.
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, grew up in Westminster after being brought over from Mexico when he was four-years-old. He was detained by federal immigration agents on Aug. 17, 2025 during a raid at an Orange County car wash, and taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center on August 22, 2025, federal authorities said.
His mother visited him every week at the Adelanto facility and saw her son’s health decline, she said previously.
Ayala-Uribe was healthy when he was initially detained, his family has said, but he developed a cough that turned into fevers.
On September 17, 2025, Ayala-Uribe submitted a request for health services for a painful buttock abscess, the report states. A nurse documented the receipt two days later.
A day after he submitted the request, however, Ayala-Uribe suffered a medical emergency related to the abscess.
No medical care provider examined him, records show.
He had been given a variety of pain medications and laxatives, “but nothing to actually address what was going on,” Dr. Peeler said. “No examination to say, ‘Well, this is an abscess that should be actually addressed surgically or we should add antibiotics.’ None of that occurred.”
Two days later, on the morning of September 20, 2025, facility staff asked medical personnel to provide a wellness check on Ayala-Uribe due to his “ill appearance,” but medical staff did not respond to the request, records show.
Later that night, facility staff again requested that medics evaluate Ayala-Uribe. “A medical staff member informed the officer all medical staff were preoccupied with other emergencies, and medical staff were waiting on a custody officer who could bring Mr. Ayala-Uribe to the medical clinic,” states the report.
On the following day, Ayala-Uribe was transferred to a hospital after a nurse documented his severe pain related to the lump on his buttock. He was shaky and had vomited. He was admitted to the hospital for a list of reasons, including sepsis — a life-threatening response to an infection.
Ayala-Uribe died the following day at the hospital.
Jose, Ayala-Uribe’s younger brother, welcomed the report.
“It’s helping show what’s going on in there, in Adelanto, any detention center,” Jose said in an interview.
The report on Ayala-Uribe was part of a trove of dozens of internal in-custody death reviews dating back to 2019 that ICE published on Friday, September 25. ICE had removed the documents from their site by the following Monday morning, said Michael Wriston, a cofounder of the Project Salt Box.
But not before the publication archived all 33 mortality reports.
“Across the board with these reports, what we noticed was just a complete lack of medical regard for people in ICE’s care. That failure to provide medication on time, failure to get people to a clinic that was capable of caring for their needs in a timely manner directly contributed to people’s deaths,” Wriston said.
ICE and DHS did not respond to emails asking why the dozens of death reports were taken down.