ICE agents claim man detained with smashed face and skull injuries 'ran headfirst into a wall'
Topics: Immigration, Minnesota, US News
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Topics: Immigration, Minnesota, US News
A man recently detained by ICE ended up with a shattered skull, but how he sustained such devastating injuries remains unclear.
Mexican immigrant Alberto Castañeda Mondragón was arrested on January 8 and was later taken to a hospital in Minnesota with broken bones in his face and skull.
When ICE agents took Castañeda Mondragón for urgent medical attention four hours after his arrest, he had a CT scan that revealed at least eight skull fractures and life-threatening hemorrhages in at least five areas of his brain, according to court documents.
Castañeda Mondragón was then transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) where ICE officers told staff that the 31-year-old man got the injuries after purposely running 'headfirst into a brick wall' while trying to flee.
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Those at HCMC reportedly didn't believe this, however, with one nurse describing their version of events as 'laughable'.
A nurse familiar with the matter told The Associated Press (AP): "It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about."
They added: "There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall."
Tensions are said to have flared between hospital staff and ICE officers when they insisted on using handcuffs to shackle Castañeda Mondragón's ankles to the bed.
The Mexican immigrant, who entered America in 2022 with valid immigration documents, was awake at the time of all this but was unable to recall for himself how he sustained his injuries.
Reportedly, he was so disorientated that he could not tell hospital staff what year it was.
The request to shackle him to his bed came after Castañeda Mondragón got up from his bed and took a few steps. ICE took this as him trying to flee, but the nurses said this wasn't the case.
"We were basically trying to explain to ICE that this is how someone with a traumatic brain injury is - they’re impulsive," one of the nurses who spoke to AP said. "We didn’t think he was making a run for the door."
Sharing the resolution that was agreed upon, they continued: "We eventually agreed with ICE that we would have a nursing assistant sit with the patient to prevent him from leaving.
"They agreed a little while later to take the shackles off."
The news about the ordeal involving Castañeda Mondragón comes after a lawyer filed court documents seeking his release.
His lawyers said that their client was 'racially profiled during the crackdown, and that officers determined only after his arrest that he had overstayed his visa', AP reports.
UNILAD has approached ICE for comment.