The death was confirmed by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, who said the 56-year-old Mexican national was found unresponsive in his cell. He’s the seventh person in Texas to die while detained by ICE this year.
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Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias was found unresponsive by staff at the Rio Grande Processing Center during a security check at around 10 a.m. Saturday, Cuellar said. Staff performed CPR and called emergency services.
Andrade-Covarrubias is the seventh person to die while detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas this year — the first being Geraldo Lunas Campos, whose death was [ruled a homicide](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/01/21/texas-el-paso-immigrant-death-ice-custody-homicide/) by the El Paso Medical Examiner’s office in January.
He’s also the second to die in an ICE facility in Laredo this year. Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez, a 63-year-old Mexican who was being held at Webb County Detention Center, died on June 19 after being found unresponsive, [according to the agency](https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/criminal-illegal-alien-mexico-passes-away-ice-custody).
Andrade-Covarrubias’ daughter, Estefani Andrade, told the Tribune that her family has not yet been contacted by federal agencies. Instead, she said, they heard about his death on Saturday through the Webb County Medical Examiner, which is performing his autopsy.
Imprisoned insinuates someone was convicted of a crime. Convicts go to prison. And these are not prisons, these are concentration camps.Although I agree that it works purely from a dictionary definition.
Enslaved is acurate, but I think that’s a hard truth for most Americans to understand. It requires contextual awareness that these are for-profit concentration camps (not generally acknowledged) where forced labor takes place (the GEO group and similar companies call it “optional” labor but will throw you into solitary or punish you in other ways if you don’t do the labor) and the public has to be aware that foeced labor while at these camps is different from a legal standpoint then forced labor of convicts at a prison. In the USA, slavery is legal if you are a convict. (Most do not understand or ignore that) however the people at these camps were never convicted of a crime which is why the policy is to call the forced labor “optional” labor.
Again, I don’t love the word detained. But I have my reasons for using it. I’m trying to convince and influence people with the words I use. To do that, I have to be tactical and pick my battles. It is more important that the general public start to understand that these are concentration camps, where people are treated inhumanely just because of what a fascist regime says. Especially if I’m editorializing a headline, I really shouldn’t rewrite too much, and the words I do use need to match the content of the article in some way.
I think the first step in building a general understanding of the situation is helping people to see that these are for-profit concentration camps first. But I’ll consider using enslaved , interned, or abducted, instead of detained if the rest of that article will agree with those words.
Thank you for challenging me on this, I hope you can continue to give me ideas.
I also hope you consider posting more yourself.