Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez

Photograph of Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez, courtesy of his family, by way of Dignity Memorial.

“Daughter, I’m leaving.”

Prophetic words spoken by Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez to his daughter, Martha Chavez, on the telephone from Edgefield Federal Correction Institution in South Carolina, where he was awaiting release and likely deportation back home to Mexico and his loving family.

A Mexican national, Cipriano was on his way home to Mexico when he contracted the deadly virus inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia which led to a fatal heart attack. He tragically passed away on September 21, 2020.

A man in his early 60s, Cipriano proudly fathered six children and was on his way home to them and to meet his grandchildren when he was detained by I.C.E.

A federal judge ordered the compassionate release of Mr. Chavez-Alvarez from Edgefield on medical grounds due to COVID-19 concerns, as he had several chronic preexisting health conditions which made him all the more susceptible to contracting the deadly disease.

This order went ignored by I.C.E. officials who prolonged his deportation process and placed him inside Irwin Detention Center, where social distancing is physically impossible. Irwin recently had been the subject of whistleblower complaints regarding both the lack of COVID-19 protocols and the pattern of forcing unwanted hysterectomies on women incarcerated there.

Instead of allowing Cipriano to return to his homeland of Mexico as per the order of the federal judge, I.C.E. then transported Cipriano from Irwin to Stewart Detention Center, also in Georgia, where two people awaiting deportation had already passed from COVID-19 complications.

Soon after his transfer to Stewart Detention Center, Cipriano began complaining to Martha during telephone conversations about the lack of COVID-19 precautions and his fear of contracting the illness.

“He said if he contracted the virus, he wouldn’t see another day,” Martha told Buzzfeed News.

Due to gross negligence on the behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and processes, as well as blatant disregard for the orders of a federal judge, Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez never made it home to his family.

Poster for Cipriano at a vigil by El Refugio at Stewart Detention Center on October 3, obtained from Facebook.

Martha is quoted by Buzzfeed in responding to her father’s preventable death: “How many deaths do they need to do things correctly? These are humans.”

Her words ring with recrimination towards a system and an institution that robbed her of the long awaited homecoming for her father, who, during phone calls everyday, spent his calls planning his homecoming to his family.

We mourn his passing.

This memorial was written by MOL team member EJ Joyner with information from an obituary by Dignity Memorial, a press release by ICE, and reporting by Jeremy Redmon and Alan Judd of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hamed Aleaziz of Buzzfeed News, and Fernie Ortiz of Kxan News. Transcribed by Eliza Kravitz.