Marie Blaise was 44 years old. On April 25, the Haitian woman complained of chest pains, another woman detained at the same migrant center in Deerfield Beach, Florida, told the Miami Herald. Authorities at the Broward Transitional Center took her blood pressure and discovered she had hypertension.
They gave her pills and told her to rest. Hours later, she began shaking and screaming, “My chest! My chest!” At 8:35 p.m. that night, she was pronounced dead. Her life ended in an immigration jail, like that of six other people who have died in the custody of US immigration authorities in the first three months of Donald Trump’s term.
Since the Republican took office for the second time in January, seven migrants have died while detained by immigration enforcement, or ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Blaise and two others died in Florida, one in Arizona, one in Missouri, one in Texas, and one in Puerto Rico.
They ranged in age from 27 to 55 and arrived from different corners of the globe: in addition to Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Ukraine, and Ethiopia. They embarked on the odyssey to the United States for various reasons and routes, but ultimately ended up in the same place: imprisoned in an infamous network of migrant detention centers denounced for its mistreatment and conditions.
The cause of Blaise’s death remains under investigation. ICE has 90 days from each death to investigate it and make public all related reports, as Congress has required since 2018. These reports include the deceased’s demographics, their immigration and criminal history in the United States, and a “synopsis of the events” leading up to the death. It is a cold, technical snapshot that reduces an entire person, a life, to their final months or years as an immigrant.
In Blaise’s case, it is currently known that she was detained on February 12 at Saint Croix International Airport in the U.S. Virgin Islands while attempting to board a flight to North Carolina without a valid immigrant visa. Immigration authorities do not know when, where, or how the woman entered the United States without authorization, but she was issued an expedited removal notice that same day.
She was taken into ICE custody on February 14 and transferred from facility to facility—as is routine—until she ended up in Broward County in early April. She remained there for 20 days until her death.
Amid Trump’s campaign of mass arrests and deportations, Democratic lawmakers are sounding the alarm over deaths like Blaise’s. “This Administration’s deportation process has been sloppy and reckless from day one.
No due process or transparency, just families unlawfully separated and left to fend for themselves. In severe cases, innocent people have died, like Marie Blaise,” Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Florida Democrat and the only Haitian-American in Congress, said in a House address Wednesday.
