The Brief

Another immigrant died in the custody of federal immigration authorities in California, raising new questions about the care of detainees amid the Trump administration’s historic mass deportation campaign.

In an announcement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Huabing Xie, an immigrant from China, had a seizure Friday at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico and died that afternoon.

Xie had been detained at the Calexico detention center since last month. ICE alleged that Xie was in the U.S. without legal status and said federal agents arrested him on Sept. 12 in Indio.

Staffers at the center gave Xie CPR and used a defibrillator, a medical device typically used to shock a patient’s heart, according to ICE. But Xie was later pronounced dead at El Centro Regional Medical Center.

Imperial County immigrants’ rights advocates said they were saddened and angered by the news. Imperial Liberation Collaborative organizer Marina Arteaga said Xie’s death fit into a pattern marked by dwindling oversight and increasingly harsh conditions at federal detention centers across the country.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Arteaga told KPBS on Monday.

Arteaga and other immigrants’ rights advocates are demanding that ICE release more details and calling on state and county authorities to investigate Xie’s death.

On Monday, ICE said an investigation was underway but declined to answer further questions.

More immigrants are dying in federal detention

Xie’s case was the second reported death of an immigrant in ICE custody in California in two weeks.

On Sept. 21, 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe died inside ICE’s detention center in the High Desert city of Adelanto after developing a cough and fever. ICE has also said they are investigating Ayala-Uribe’s death.

The incidents come amid what several Democratic senators have called the deadliest six-month period for immigrants in federal detention nationwide since 2018.

ICE has publicly reported that at least 14 people have died in its custody since January. In a letter earlier this year, Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock said the agency had also failed to acknowledge a fifteenth death at a county jail in New York State.

(ICE has since publicly confirmed that death but has yet to list it on the agency’s official detainee death tracking page as of Monday.)

Ayala-Uribe and Xie bring the total to 17.

That string of in-custody deaths comes as ICE races to expand its massive detention network. Flush with $45 billion in new funding from Congress, the agency is building new tent camps and expanding its use of military bases in a mad rush to fulfill President Donald Trump’s vow of mass deportations.

In Imperial County, Arteaga said that rush has also come with a crackdown on transparency.

Arteaga and the Collaborative have been visiting the Imperial County detention center since 2022 to spend time with detainees and document their experiences. They were completely shut out as of this August, she said.

“We have not been able to go inside the facility,” Arteaga said. “We don't know what's going on.”

What we know about Xie’s death

Beyond what ICE has already described, the circumstances of Xie’s death are unclear.

A spokesperson for El Centro Regional Medical Center reached by phone Friday also declined to comment.

One important question, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice Coalition executive director Daniela Flores said, is whether immigration agents used force against Xie during his arrest or detention.

Another question, she said, is whether Xie had any existing medical conditions that could lead to seizures — and whether he reported any symptoms to staff at the detention center.

“That is putting myself into his family's shoes,” Flores said. “Knowing that they probably want answers.”

Earlier this year, the California Attorney General’s office found that the Imperial County detention center was struggling to hire a medical director, leading to “delays in addressing clinical errors by lower-level health staff.”

Flores is asking state Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Imperial County public health officials to investigate.

In its statement Friday, ICE said U.S. Border Patrol agents first arrested Xie in 2023 near the eastern San Diego County town of Tecate. The agency said Xie was placed in removal proceedings and released.

KPBS could not locate any criminal records for Xie.

Local officials face calls for accountability

To Flores and Arteaga, Xie’s death highlights a lack of oversight of the Imperial Regional Detention Facility by elected officials.

The detention center is run by Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private, for-profit company based in Centerville, Utah. The facility holds up to 782 detainees. In 2022, ICE reported that it spent more than $44 million on the facility every year.

The detention center has faced allegations of abuse in the past. In 2021, Carlos Murillo Vega, who grew up in Imperial County, sued MTC for holding him in solitary confinement for over a year. In 2022, nine detainees said in a civil rights complaint that their cells were moldy and the water tasted like bleach.

California has given county officials the power to inspect ICE detention centers in their jurisdiction. But Imperial County and most others have not used that power, Calmatters reported earlier this month.

In an email to KPBS, Calexico Mayor Diana Noricumbo said the detention center is located in an unincorporated part of the city, outside their jurisdiction.

KPBS also reached out to Imperial County’s five supervisors and a county spokesperson. None responded to questions by publication time.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is blaming Boeing and his own agency for botching a test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

A 311-page report details the issues that led to the failure of Starliner's first crewed test flight, which in June 2024 launched NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The duo's launch was initially a success — but as their Starliner spacecraft approached the station, multiple thrusters failed, hampering the crew's ability to steer toward the station and dock.

After months of deliberation, NASA and Boeing made the decision to send Starliner back to Earth without Wilmore and Williams on board. Instead, the astronauts remained on the space station and returned home nine months later — in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

In a news conference Thursday, Isaacman said the report classified the failure as a Type A Mishap — the highest classification for a mission failure. The Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents, along with the Apollo 1 fire, were also classified as a Type A Mishap. While those accidents resulted in the deaths of crewmembers, the Starliner mission was "ultimately successful in preserving crew safety," according to the report.

The report identifies the thrusters as a key technical issue leading to the failure, although an investigation is still ongoing and a root cause has not yet been found.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected," said Isaacman. "But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

He said those organizational and leadership problems were seen at both Boeing and NASA, Isaacman's own agency.

The report identified an erosion of trust between the two organizations and leadership that was "overly risk-tolerant."

Isaacman said that the more than 30 launch attempts for this mission led to "cumulative schedule pressure and decision fatigue." When discussing whether to return Wilmore and Williams in Starliner, Isaacman said the "disagreements over crew return options deteriorated into unprofessional conduct while the crew remained on orbit."

Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability," but didn't offer any details.

"These are very complex programs, and complex programs like this fail in complex ways," said Don Platt, department head of aerospace engineering, physics and space science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. "Those organizational issues are oftentimes, maybe even more important than the technical problems that they're facing."

Such a public scolding of NASA and one of its contractors by its own leader is uncommon, says Platt, who worked on the construction of the space station.

"I think it's really setting the stage for sort of the new way that NASA plans to do business here in his administration," says Platt.

He says that could mean greater transparency and oversight over NASA's contractors

Despite NASA's plans to decommission the space station by the end of the decade, Isaacman says he is still committed to flying Starliner. That would leave NASA with two options, Boeing and SpaceX, to fly astronauts to the station — something SpaceX already does with regularity.

The report offered 61 formal recommendations ahead of the next crewed Starliner mission.

"We're grateful to NASA for its thorough investigation and the opportunity to contribute to it," Boeing said in an emailed statement. "We're working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA's vision for two commercial crew providers."

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The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of close to 600 employees, a move the LBUSD says is necessary to stabilize its ballooning deficit.

Board members approved two separate resolutions, the first of which does not renew the contracts of 515 certificated employees, who are on temporary contracts that must be re-upped annually. Though it is common for the district to choose not to renew some temporary contracts, the non-renewal of hundreds of TK-12 teachers, early childhood education teachers and social workers represents a massive change for the next school year from the current workforce of 10,000 total employees. While schools across the district will feel the cuts, Poly and Jordan high schools may be especially hard hit; 14 and 12 teachers at each site are listed on the district’s document of non-renewals.

The second resolution authorized the district to formally lay off 54 classified district positions: non-teaching staff members ranging from office support staff to instructional and recreation aides to library media assistants to parent liaisons.

The board votes come after months of warnings from the district that costs and spending have outpaced the district’s funding, saddling LBUSD with a $70 million deficit. The district is now attempting to shrink that deficit through a fiscal stabilization plan that “has prioritized preserving core instructional, wellness, and student support services,” the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.

Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized — “a really grave situation, fiscally,” she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.

Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it’s still not enough, Baker said.

“The release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,” the district wrote in the agenda item.

For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it’s a way that “the district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,” said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.

Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.

While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is “reading the tea leaves” and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.

In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and “choose to protect the people who serve students every single day.”

On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel López was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.

Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. “There’s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,” said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions “sadly, reluctantly and necessarily.”