A Mexican man in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody died Tuesday at a Chicago-area hospital, officials said.
Roberto Rodriguez-Espinoza, 37, died of a “subdural hematoma” at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, ICE said Thursday.
Rodriguez-Espinoza, who authorities allege was a “documented Latin Kings gang member with a 2016 burglary conviction and a 2008 theft conviction,” was arrested in Chicago and was being housed at the McHenry County Adult Correctional Facility in Woodstock.
On Sept. 7, authorities said he began “acting confused” and was taken to the hospital for evaluation due to a “history of drinking.”
ICE said Rodriguez-Espinoza was transferred the next day to Northwestern Medicine Huntley Hospital where he was diagnosed with a bran hemorrhage. He was then taken to Central DuPage Hospital for a neurosurgery consult, where it was ruled he “was unlikely to survive surgery.”
“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. 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,” the department said in a statement.
