A girl who died of a coronary heart assault in a federal immigration detention facility in South Florida instructed her son over the telephone on the day she died that employees refused to let her see a doctor for chest pains, her son instructed a county investigator.
Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old Haitian nationwide, died on April 25 on the Broward Transitional Heart (BTC)—a privately run facility in Pompano Seaside, Florida, that contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A medical expert’s report obtained by Purpose by way of a public data request concluded that she died of pure causes from heart problems.
An investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Workplace interviewed Blaise’s son, Kervens Blaise, who mentioned his mom reported being denied medical care.
“I requested Kervens when he final spoke along with his mom and mentioned on Friday, 4/25/25 at 2:54 pm (California time),” the investigator wrote within the report. “At the moment, did his mom complained of any well being points and he states she complained of getting chest pains and belly cramps, and when she requested the detention employees to see a doctor, they refused her. Kervens states his mom has been experiencing the chest pains for a couple of month now.”
Blaise additionally reportedly instructed a number of different detainees that she wasn’t feeling properly that day.
Blaise was first detained by ICE on February 14 and was transferred to a number of completely different ICE detention facilities earlier than being despatched to BTC in early April.
An official ICE narrative of Blaise’s medical historical past throughout her detention states that she had a historical past of hypertension and kidney illness, and that she repeatedly refused to take prescribed remedy. Based on the ICE report, Blaise noticed medical suppliers 3 times between her arrival at BTC on April 5 and her demise on April 25.
Nonetheless, BTC detainees who witnessed Blaise collapse mentioned there was additionally a sluggish employees response.
In a report on inhumane situations at South Florida ICE detention facilities not too long ago revealed by a number of human rights and authorized help teams, a former BTC detainee recognized solely as “Rosa” instructed researchers that she heard a scream from a close-by cell and noticed Blaise kneeling on the bottom.
“We began yelling for assist, however the guards ignored us,” Rosa instructed the report authors. “Lastly, one officer approached slowly, checked out her with out intervening, after which walked away. After that, it took eight minutes for the medical supplier to reach, after which one other 15 or 20 earlier than the rescue staff got here. By then, she was not transferring.”
Legal professionals and detainees have repeatedly alleged medical neglect by employees at ICE services in South Florida, together with BTC, the Krome Detention Heart, and the Federal Detention Heart Miami.
Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who was detained by ICE this spring and ultimately deported, instructed the report’s researchers that BTC employees usually refused to provide him his insulin.
Chauhan ultimately collapsed whereas standing within the dinner line at BTC, resulting in him being hospitalized for 3 days. Chauhan’s son mentioned that hospital and ICE employees wouldn’t give him any data on his father’s situation, and he ultimately realized his father had been registered below a false identify.
A former detainee, whose lawyer requested that he solely be recognized as “A.S.,” tells Purpose he spent 4 days in an overcrowded holding cell with 50 to 60 different folks on the Krome Detention Heart.
“There was a dude, he handed out. He was crying for his medication for like two or three days,” A.S. says. “They did not give him his medication till he lastly handed out, proper earlier than they have been gonna put him on the aircraft.”
One other man detained at Krome instructed the report’s authors that the one means he may get guards to imagine he was affected by an excruciating hernia was to throw himself on the ground. Jail employees ultimately wheeled him to the medical staff, the place the physician on obligation instructed him he “seemingly simply had fuel” and provided him “a Pepto-Bismol and two Tylenols.” The detainee refused to go away till the physician ultimately agreed to ship him to a hospital, the place he acquired a CAT scan that discovered he had a strangulated belly wall hernia. “The physician [at the hospital] instructed me that if I had not are available then, my intestines would have seemingly ruptured,” the person mentioned.
Blaise’s demise led to condemnations and requires investigations from Florida Democrats, reminiscent of Rep. Frederica Wilson (D–Miami Gardens).
“Marie is simply an instance of what’s going to proceed to occur,” Wilson mentioned after touring BTC in Could. “That is one thing we’ll proceed to see. It is going to get extra crowded. It is going to proceed to have extra deaths. It is going to proceed to have extra kids with out their dad and mom.”
