ICE Will Give Officers Shock Gloves and Body Cameras. Neither Answers Basic Questions About Detainee Deaths.

Since the Delaney Hall detainee death first surfaced through Rep. Rob Menendez's August 3 press call, immigration authorities have released the identity of the man who died: Jose Chajon-Raxon, a 43-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who had been in ICE custody for less than a week.

According to a Department of Homeland Security statement to The Jersey Vindicator, Chajon-Raxon was arrested and processed at Delaney Hall on July 18. The next day, a nurse responded to a call and found him "experiencing seizure-like activity." Staff called emergency medical services and he was taken to University Hospital in Newark. ICE released him from custody on July 22, DHS said, and the agency claims it was never told he died.

DHS defended the gap by pointing to a policy change. "Per ICE policy, when an individual is no longer in ICE custody, then ICE will no longer be responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths that may occur," the spokesperson told The Jersey Vindicator. "This is common sense. ICE is not responsible when an individual passes away weeks after leaving their custody."

Menendez has said that policy shift dropped a Biden-era rule requiring ICE to review and report all detainee deaths, including ones that happen after release. DHS and ICE did not respond to the outlet's requests for information until August 12, more than ten days after Menendez went public.

If ICE releases someone hours before death and then claims no responsibility to report it, the public loses visibility into cases that happened because of what occurred in custody. Whether the timing here was a bureaucratic release-to-avoid-reporting maneuver or a genuine coincidence hasn't been established. No one has alleged, let alone proven, that Chajon-Raxon's release was timed to dodge disclosure rules. But the sequence of arrest, seizure the next day, hospital transport, release three days later, and death is exactly the kind of pattern a reporting requirement exists to catch.

A broader pattern, not an isolated case

Chajon-Raxon's death is one of more than 30 in ICE custody since October, according to TIME, which reported that the fatality rate hit a 22-year high in the fiscal year's opening months. A JAMA-published analysis found 18 deaths between October and January 19 alone, and TIME reported at least 17 more since then. Three people died in ICE custody during the entire 2022 fiscal year, per that same analysis.

DHS disputes the framing. A spokesperson told TIME "there has been NO spike in deaths," citing a custody death rate of 0.009% as of May 29 and arguing ICE provides better medical care than most prisons holding U.S. citizens. That's a real data point worth weighing. Raw death counts can rise simply because the detained population has expanded sharply under the Trump administration's enforcement surge, and a bigger population naturally produces more deaths in absolute terms.

But the JAMA report's own metric adjusts for exactly that, measuring deaths per 100,000 person-years in custody rather than raw counts, and still finds the rate climbing from 13 per 100,000 in fiscal 2023 to 47.5 per 100,000 more recently. That's a rate increase, not just a population effect, and it undercuts the "no spike" claim as stated.

Parady La, a 46-year-old Cambodian American father from Philadelphia, died in custody earlier this year, three days after arrest. ICE's own detainee death report says he was "found distressed and stuporous with ongoing vomiting and abnormal vital signs," and that medical staff later "found Mr. LA unresponsive and pulseless." More than seven months later, his daughter Jazmine La tells TIME the family still doesn't know what happened in his final hours or what treatment, if any, he got. "There's obviously a lot missing, a lot we don't know, and the uncertainty of it all is really hard," she said.

New gear, same disclosure fight

ICE is rolling out two new pieces of technology that cut in opposite directions on accountability.

The agency plans to spend $10 million to $20 million outfitting officers with shock gloves, a device the Associated Press first reported and branded internally as the "G.L.O.V.E. function," according to the Long Beach Post. The gloves look like normal patrol gear until an officer presses a button to deliver a painful electric shock meant to gain compliance, without leaving burn marks like a Taser.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the purchase "outrageous" at an August press conference and warned that misuse could bring criminal and civil consequences for officers in her state. Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Maxwell Frost and Delia Ramirez criticized the purchase on social media. DHS defended it only in general terms, saying it is "constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field" without addressing the device specifically.

The devices aren't without documented harm. A pending lawsuit alleges a 43-year-old man died in 2024 after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and 13 more times with a Taser at a Kentucky jail; an internal investigation found two shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds, far beyond the manufacturer's 15-second limit. The Associated Press found two additional lawsuits alleging injuries, both since dismissed.

Separately, ICE announced it will equip all officers with body cameras, according to the ACLU. But the agency's own policy states it will release footage of deaths and serious injuries only if doing so is "in the best interests of the agency," not the public. The ACLU's Jay Stanley argues that standard guts the tool's oversight value before it's even deployed, calling it "exactly the opposite of a policy that will make body cameras an effective oversight and accountability measure."

Whether that policy holds up under pressure is now the open question. Congress has not scheduled hearings on either the glove purchase or the body camera release standard, and no independent audit of ICE's revised death-reporting rule has been announced.