Lewis Dempsey Jr.
A photograph of Lewis, obtained from his obituary in Southern Funeral Home Winnfield.
Lewis Dempsey Jr. lived to work. He graduated high school with perfect attendance every year from first through twelfth grade. He worked any overtime that was offered. He covered for his co-workers’ shifts and vacations. On May 1, Lewis, a lieutenant in the privately-owned ICE Winn Correctional Center in Winn Parish, Louisiana, which houses approximately 1,500 people, went to work unaware that he had a fever. Later that day, he was sent home. Just a little over a month later, on the morning of June 10, Lewis passed away from complications from COVID-19 at just 57 years old.
“While he may be an ordinary statistic to some,” Lewis’s sister Dochia Doughty wrote on the GoFundMe page she set up to cover her brother’s medical expenses before he passed away, “he is an extraordinary brother to us. He epitomizes a loving, kind-natured man with a childlike innocence.”
“Lewis’ love for his six brothers and sisters and our love for him is extraordinary,” she wrote. “While we know we are not the only family devastated by CoVid, his battle has shaken our family to the core. We desperately miss his extraordinary and unique sense of humor. We gather from the incredible nurses who worked diligently to save Lewis, as soon as he was off the ventilator, he is already making them laugh daily. While we get to FaceTime with him, it is not the same as being able to wrap our arms around him and tell him everything is going to be okay.”
Lewis is the third employee of the private prison company LaSalle Corrections known to have died from COVID-19. All three employees are assumed to have contracted the virus at ICE detention centers in rural Louisiana, where 180 people in detention have tested positive.
LaSalle spokesperson Scott Sutterfield said about Lewis, “We were saddened to learn today of the passing of our friend and colleague. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to his family, friends and coworkers.” ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor does it report when employees of the private prison companies it contracts with test positive or die.
Lewis’s death is a tragic reminder that ICE’s decision to detain people in crowded detention centers, even in the midst of a deadly global pandemic, has lethal consequences. As well as the lives of people detained in ICE detention centers, including children, the lives of ICE employees, their families, and their communities are also put at risk. As of June 10, 115 people detained at Winn Correctional Center had tested positive for COVID-19.
Dochia updated Lewis’s GoFundMe page several times after he was finally rushed to a nearby city hospital because he could not receive non-emergency medical attention in the small rural town of Winnfield, Louisiana, where Winn Correctional Center is located.
On June 10, Dochia wrote, “It is with a heavy heart that I am letting everyone that loved Lewis know that he passed today at 11:15. My sister and I were allowed in to love on him beforehand. He was alert and listening to us. His heart just stopped. He left this world knowing he was loved by so many family and friends.”
This memorial was written by MOL team member Ilyana Benjelloun with information from reporting by Noah Lanard of Mother Jones and Lewis Dempsey’s GoFundMe page, set up by his sister Dochia Doughty.