AURORA | There’s little known about the 2017 death of an Iranian man who was being held at an Aurora immigration detention facility — the ACLU of Colorado is suing for more information.
In a news release Tuesday, the ACLU said the lawsuit is requesting records related to the arrest, detention and death of Kamyar Samimi. He died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement Angency custody Dec. 2, 2017.
GEO Group. Inc. owns and operates the facility in north Aurora.
“It has now been sixteen months since Mr. Samimi died, and ICE continues to keep the community in the dark about this tragedy,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Arash Jahanian said in a statement. “All we know is that ICE arrested a man who had lived in the U.S. for over four decades, and 15 days later he died in ICE’s care. The public deserves to know more and this lawsuit seeks that information.”
It’s unclear how Samimi died. Those details have not been made available by ICE.
ACLU of Colorado filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2017 and reportedly received a five-page response, which said the investigation was complete and more documents would be forthcoming. That was in July, but ACLU has never received any more information about Samimi’s death or the related investigation.
“Immigration detention facilities, like the one operated by GEO Group in Aurora, are all too often cloaked in secrecy, offering little to no transparency into the way detainees are treated within their walls,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein in a statement. “We are filing suit to further the public’s right to know what goes on in these secretive taxpayer-funded institutions.”
A spokesperson for ICE said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
This story has been updated to include a response from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
