Detained by ICE, he missed multiple cancer treatments. Now he’s in hospice.

When Oudone Lothirath was in immigration detention in January, he missed four out of five chemotherapy sessions he had scheduled in his fight against aggressive lymphoma.

While Lothirath expected to eventually die of the disease, he had hoped to live as long as possible with treatment. But a scan last month showed the cancer had spread into his bone marrow.

“I was in shock, seeing those little dots,” he said of the scan. “When I was down in Texas, I didn’t get no medical attention, nothing.”

His fight for release was easier than other immigrants. His friend and personal care assistant, Christina Vilay, presented a letter from M Health Fairview explaining he would “succumb” without ongoing chemotherapy. Without the need for a lawsuit, ICE agreed to fly Lothirath back to Minnesota after spending 10 days in custody.

“Shockingly enough, they let him out, but I think it’s because they just knew if he stayed, he would have died in their custody,” Vilay said.

Because he was so frail, it took a few days to clear Lothirath for travel. When he arrived in the Twin Cities, he was immediately hospitalized with a bladder infection and sepsis. On March 20, he entered hospice. He’s now living his final days in Vilay’s home.

Lothirath’s situation is one of the more extreme instances of immigrants not getting medical care in detention. But GoFundMe pages, personal anecdotes and court filings show other instances of untreated injuries, the denial of life-sustaining medications and missed surgery appointments.

“It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,” said former DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a February news release. “This is the best health care that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

But critics say the department is shirking federal standards that require detainees to have access to basic medicine.

Dr. Janna Gewirtz O’Brien, president-elect of the Minnesota chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, is among hundreds of local doctors who have contacted Congress with concerns. She said it’s impossible to quantify how many people will experience health complications because of their detention.

“There is this number that is countable, which is the number of people that are directly killed by ICE or the number of people that die while they’re in custody,” she said. “But then there’s this whole group of people that either had chronic medical conditions, or that didn’t have adequate access to care while they were in detention and then deteriorated.”

Members of Congress are also advocating for raising ICE’s standards of care.

After a recent visit, Morrison, a women’s health physician, said she was most disturbed to find a lack of standard medical protocols for detainees.

“[Nurses] are not there 24/7, and really the only medical screening they do is ask [detainees] if they’re taking any medication,” she said.

In her lawsuit, Morrison highlighted the case of Ta Eh Doh Lah, a Karen refugee from St. Paul. At the time of her detention in January, Lah was the mother of a 5-month-old infant. She suffered from postpartum depression and had congenital heart disease, which was supposed to be repaired following childbirth. Lah was transferred to Texas within a day of her detainment due to a lack of beds in Minnesota.

Breastfeeding women who are separated from their babies can develop mastitis, breast abscesses and other problems that Morrison said could have “lifelong consequences for both of them.”

DHS spokesperson McLaughlin initially claimed Lah entered the country illegally, but Lah’s lawyer said Lah was a refugee who had been vetted before coming to the United States with her entire family in 2024. The lawyer petitioned for her release, which was eventually approved.

Other noncitizens have described cramped, unhygienic conditions and a lack of basic medical care at the Whipple Federal Building.

Kirill Zavialov, a 23-year-old Russian asylum-seeker from Woodbury, was taken to Whipple after a regular check-in with immigration officials in January. He’d broken his leg playing soccer and had it encased in a boot during his detainment.

Zavialov requested ibuprofen for the pain but was told there wasn’t any. A “friendly” ICE agent gave him a yoga mat and shock blanket when he complained that he was cold, he said, but these were later taken away because it wasn’t fair to the other detainees who had to sleep on cement floors.

Three days later, Zavialov was transferred to the Kandiyohi County jail, which has 25 years of experience holding immigrants awaiting court. The jail was vastly different, Zavialov said. He had a bed and a blanket. He also had a tablet for making calls. When he mentioned wisdom tooth pain from not being able to brush his teeth at Whipple, the jail offered him free dental surgery.

“I’m not gonna lie, in jail, it wasn’t bad compared to the ICE office,” Zavialov said.

Members of Congress are pushing ICE to shut down its detention centers, like the tent city in El Paso, that have been at the center of a national firestorm over detainee illnesses and death. ICE has refused.

Lothirath was 22 when he was convicted of aiding and abetting a drive-by shooting in Rochester. He was the one driving. His passenger pulled the trigger, hitting another vehicle’s rear license plate.

That felony conviction 35 years ago ended Lothirath’s path to naturalization and consigned him to a lifetime of checking in with ICE. But because Laos doesn’t have a repatriation agreement with the United States, Lothirath was never apprehended until this year.

He’s still on the hook for deportation to Laos. But as he confronts imminent death in his adopted country, the federal government is unlikely to get its wish.

On March 21, with the shades drawn in the Vilay family sunroom, Lothirath sat cross-legged opposite three Buddhist monks on a bamboo mat, hands clasped in prayer. Friends and family filled the room, including his sister Vienne Lothirath, who’d flown in from Atlanta to say goodbye at her brother’s final prayer, a Buddhist ritual about giving thanks and letting go of pain and blame.

Painful mouth ulcers prevented him from speaking that day, but in a prior interview, Lothirath acknowledged to the Star Tribune that while he felt angry about the shortening of his life, he wasn’t a ruminator by nature.