More than 160 immigrants have died in detention centers since 2003, with ten of those deaths occurring this year. To honor these lives lost and to raise consciousness about in-custody deaths, Detention Watch Network has coordinated a series of national actions to coincide with Día de los Muertos, also known as Day of the Dead.

The Day of the Dead National Actions kicked off on October 26 in New York with a funeral procession. Tuesday’s funeral procession in Washington, D.C., ended at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters where—keeping in line with Día de los Muertos tradition—there was an altar honoring the migrants who have lost their lives in ICE custody, including one who died over a week ago.

Immigration Impact, a project of the immigrants’ rights organization the American Immigration Council, says on its site the number of deaths stands at 165, which is based on ICE’s own data. As Rewire previously reported, some of those deaths “were likely preventable and the result of ‘substandard medical care and violations of applicable detention standards.'”

In a phone interview, Danny Cendejas, the organizing director at Detention Watch Network, told Rewire that uplifting the voices of those most affected by the detention system is of prime importance during the Day of the Dead National Actions, which is why people who have been detained are speaking at events across the country. One formerly detained woman named Joselin from El Salvador spoke at the D.C. action and discussed the poor medical care provided in detention. She shared the story of her friend Maria, who she said has leukemia and was not given needed medication by ICE. Instead, ICE deported Maria as her health was deteriorating, explained Joselin. It is because of situations like this that “all detention centers must be shut down,” Joselin told the crowd in Spanish.

Inadequate medical care has resulted in avoidable deaths in detention centers. Many of these facilities are run by the two largest private prison companies in the nation: GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which is actually in the process of rebranding as CoreCivic “in an attempt to overhaul a business that has been dogged by accusations of inmate abuse and violence,” Fusion reported last week.

In February, Detention Watch Network in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center, released a report examining how “egregious violations” of medical care standards contributed to at least eight in-custody deaths of immigrants over a two-year period in ICE-operated detention facilities. A July report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) relied on death reports compiled and released by ICE focused on 18 migrants who died in ICE custody from mid-2012 to mid-2015. The findings of these reports provide further evidence of the inherently inhumane nature of detention.

More recently, on Tuesday, the Guardian detailed the story of 52-year-old Jose Jaramillo, who died of a completely preventable kidney infection while detained inside the CCA-run Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico. ICE had detained him for re-entering the United States to reunite with his wife and children.

Jaramillo was diagnosed with diabetes by prison medical staff in 2007, Oliver Laughland explained in the Guardian. Under the Bureau of Prisons infectious disease regulations, which CCA was bound by contract to follow, Jaramillo should have received a routine pneumococcal vaccine that would have cost CCA about $9. The vaccine would have protected him against pneumonia and meningitis, both of which he was susceptible to as a diabetic. Lisa Curtis, the medical malpractice attorney who took Jaramillo’s case to court, told the Guardian that CCA likely believed these vaccinations were too expensive.

CCA medical staff gave Jaramillo cough medicine and saltwater to treat his undiagnosed kidney infection, according to Laughland’s report. CCA did not refer him to a physician, despite CCA’s own policy requiring any detainee who reports sick three times with the same symptoms to be automatically referred to a physician with the ability to prescribe medicine. Jaramillo’s symptoms persisted for weeks, eventually turning to sepsis and then to pneumococcal meningitis. The Guardian reported that Jaramillo died three months ago.

Cendejas told Rewire that, ultimately, it is ICE’s responsibility to address the death toll in detention.

“ICE is the one seeking contracts with private prison companies and local governments that maintain really perverse policies and uphold the detention system as it is,” he told Rewire. “What we often see between ICE and companies like CCA is that they throw blame at each other when these deaths occur. CCA will say it’s ICE’s fault and ICE will say it’s CCA. We know it’s our government that is maintaining these policies, that is contracting with these companies, that is maintaining a system that profits off of these inhumane practices and ultimately, profits off of death.”

As Rewire previously reported, in 2015, CCA made $3,356 in profit per prisoner and GEO Group made $2,135 in profit per prisoner.

Use of Private Prison Companies Continues, Despite DHS Review

Just weeks after Jaramillo’s death, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it would no longer contract with private prison companies like CCA. This would mean closing Cibola County prison, as it was cited as “among the worst providers of medical care in this cohort of private prisons, and the DOJ found that medical complaints were the most frequent grievance of inmates held in the contract network,” the Guardian reported.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the agency might follow the lead of the DOJ and end its ties with private prisons. An advisory council was created by DHS “to evaluate whether the immigration detention operations conducted by ICE should move in the same direction.” A report on the council’s findings is due November 30. But while the DHS committee evaluates the use of private prison companies, ICE continues to expand its detention network, including snapping up prisons ordered closed by the DOJ and renewing contracts with private prison companies that run family detention centers.

The Cibola County Commission voted last week to approve a contract with ICE to use the Cibola County facility as an immigration detention center, primarily to detain Haitian immigrants.

Cendejas called the efforts to expand detention “egregious and disrespectful.” The organizing director added that he isn’t entirely confident that ICE will stop contracting with companies like CCA.

“It’s difficult to see how this review is to be considered legitimate if these contradictory actions are going on with ICE,” the organizing director said. “No one can say what’s going to be in the report. We won’t know until it’s released, but I can tell you what I think it should say—and that’s the truth. The truth is that we know it’s an inhumane system that has allowed these deaths to happen. It’s a system full of negligence.”

While Cendejas asserts that detention should not be an option for immigrants and that community-based alternatives are available, those participating in the Day of the Dead National Actions do have two specific demands: By January 30, they want ICE to release reports for the ten in-custody deaths that have occurred so far this year, and they want to see the closure of Louisiana’s LaSalle Detention Facility, where three of this year’s deaths have occurred.

As Rewire reported earlier this year, ICE’s death review process is murky at best. While ICE’s own investigators work with those from the Beaumont, Texas-based company Creative Corrections to perform a thorough investigation, the public does not have access to much of what is found. Any of the exhibits gathered are not made accessible, neither are medical records or the findings from Creative Corrections. The report summaries issued to the public, written by ICE staff, also do not admit any wrongdoing or draw any conclusions about the conditions that led to the in-custody deaths.

Despite these facts, Detention Watch Network and its partner organizations still say the release of these death reports is necessary.

“Any proof that illustrates just how badly the immigration detention system abuses immigrants and just how badly it has failed them, is useful information,” Cendejas said. “Anything that can be used to further illustrate that immigrants should not be subjected to this cruel, unnecessary, and inhumane system is useful. We need a system that is humane and that respects the dignity of all. That is not the system we currently have in place.”

The Day of the Dead National Actions will continue until November 4.