Ten ICE detainees dead by suicide

“I feel in my heart that she’s very worried about me”

On the fourth day of isolation, Brayan Rayo Garzón wrote a note to his mother. The 27-year-old Colombian veteran had been placed in solitary confinement at Phelps County Jail in Missouri after testing positive for COVID-19. His mental health appointment had been cancelled, twice. Once because the clinic was understaffed. Once because he had coronavirus. Guards had denied his repeated written requests to call his mother.

In Spanish, he wrote: “I feel in my heart that she’s very worried about me.”

A guard collected the note and walked away. Within the hour, Garzón was found unconscious with a sheet around his neck. The autopsy would classify it as suicide.

His mother, Adriana Garzon, later told the Associated Press that her son had previously tried to harm himself in detention. He threw himself down stairs and was medicated for it. Another detainee told her guards never came when prisoners called for help. “Indirectly, they pushed him to do this,” she said.

Garzón was the first in what has become a surge of suicides in immigration detention. His death on April 7, 2025, marked the beginning of the deadliest period in the history of American immigration detention. In the 17 months since Donald Trump returned to office, at least ten ICE detainees have died by suicide, seven of them since October 2025 alone. That is already more than any fiscal year in ICE history. The agency typically records one or zero.

The suicides account for nearly a fifth of the 51 deaths in ICE custody since January 2025. Nine of the ten who died were Hispanic men, one was Chinese. The average age was 32. Seven of the ten had no record of a violent crime in the United States.

A system designed to break people

The story of what is happening inside ICE detention facilities has been told primarily as a story about bureaucratic dysfunction, institutions too large to manage, contractors too loosely monitored, screening protocols not being followed. The Associated Press investigation published on May 27 exposed the data: ten suicides, unprecedented pace, facilities where ICE’s own 12-hour mental health screening standard was not met. DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis described the deaths as “extremely rare” and claimed detainees receive “comprehensive healthcare, including mental health services.”

But to understand what is happening, start not with the data. Start with the note.

Start with Rosairo Díaz in Nicaragua, learning that her son Victor Manuel Díaz, who sent money home so the family could build a house, was found unconscious in his room at Camp East Montana in El Paso on January 14, 2026. Start with his sons Kenny and Jefferson, who will grow up without their father. Start with Heber Sánchez Domínguez’s wife and children in Mexico, who are raising funds for funeral expenses because no one in the American immigration system will cover the cost.

These are not anomalies. These are the predictable products of a system that locks people in cages for the crime of seeking work and safety in America, then refuses them the mental healthcare that any incarcerated person in a federal prison would receive as a matter of course.

Dr. Sanjay Basu, an epidemiologist at UCSF who has studied mortality in ICE detention, put it plainly: “Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective. This is one of those alarming, sudden increases.”

Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer of New York City jails who has consulted with ICE on preventing detainee deaths, was more direct: “The increase reflects failures in how the system’s being operated, and particularly failures in how the first stages of coming into detention are happening so that people aren’t being assessed adequately.”

The system is not failing to protect people. The system is working exactly as designed, by private companies that profit from every bed filled, and by a political class that has every incentive to keep the beds full.

Following the money

While the detainees died, the private prison companies that run most of ICE’s detention infrastructure reported record profits.

GEO Group, the nation’s largest immigrant detention operator, reported $254 million in profit in 2026, a nearly 70% increase from the previous year. The company received over $710 million in ICE contracts between January 2025 and January 2026. CoreCivic, its closest competitor, received nearly $269 million in the same period and reported $116.5 million in profit.

GEO Group, its executives, and affiliated political action committees donated over $1.6 million to Trump-affiliated entities. In May 2026, the company appointed David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive, as ICE’s acting leader. Senator Elizabeth Warren filed an ethics complaint against Venturella, noting the obvious conflict of interest: the man now overseeing the agency that regulates his former company is a former executive of the company he now regulates.

This is not a bug. It is the business model.

At Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, the largest immigrant detention facility in the United States, with 1,752 beds, run by CoreCivic, Denny Adan González, a 33-year-old Cuban man, died on April 28, 2026. ICE called it a suspected suicide. It was the 18th death in ICE custody in Georgia alone. Priyanka Bhatt, senior staff attorney with Project South and the Detention Watch Network, said: “Mr. Denny Adán González’s death marks the 21st death in ICE custody in Georgia. This staggering and shameful number will only continue to grow unless action is taken now.”

The screens that weren’t built

Heber Sánchez Domínguez, 34, was arrested in Minnesota on January 7, 2026, for driving without a license, a misdemeanor. He was transferred to ICE custody and held at Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility in Georgia. His ICE intake screening documented that he had denied medication, that he had documented medical and mental health issues, and that he had documented suicidal ideation.

Despite all of this, he was cleared for general population. On January 14, the same day Victor Manuel Díaz died in Texas, Sánchez Domínguez was found hanging by the neck in his cell. He left behind a wife and children.

Congresswoman Nikema Williams issued a formal demand for answers from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. She received no response.

At least three of the nine facilities where suicides occurred had documented compliance failures with ICE’s own 12-hour screening requirements. The agency’s internal protocols demand that every detainee be evaluated for mental health risk within 12 hours of arrival. But the system is not calibrated for 60,000 people, the current ICE detainee population, a 50% surge from the roughly 34,000 held under Biden. When you pack that many people into that many facilities run by that many contractors, some of whom have no experience managing this population, the screenings fail. The appointments get cancelled. The notes get collected and walk away.

What the system refuses to see

Victor Manuel Díaz’s body was routed by ICE to Beaumont, Texas, for autopsy, bypassing the local independent medical examiner in El Paso. His family, represented by attorney Randall Kallinen of LULAC, has disputed the suicide ruling. They want an independent investigation. They want the body returned. They want someone to explain why a man who was sending money home to build a house decided to hang himself in a detention camp.

ICE released delayed death reports in April 2026 covering Victor Manuel Díaz, Heber Sánchez Domínguez, Parady La, and Luis Núñez Cáceres, bringing the 2026 total to 17 deaths. The 18th was Denny Adan González. The 19th is already known. The pace in 2026 is averaging one in-custody death per week.

Senator Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told his colleagues on the floor: “In Fiscal Year 2026, the death rate in ICE custody is higher than any year on record, higher even than the COVID-19 spike of 2020.”

The counterargument, the one DHS and the contractors will offer, is that the suicide rate as a percentage of the detained population remains statistically low. They will cite the 0.009% figure. They will note that more detainees mean more deaths, period.

This is true as far as it goes. It does not go far enough.

The rate was near zero when the population was smaller. The rate is spiking now, with the same population demographics, the same mental health profiles, under the same constitutional guarantees. What changed was not the people. What changed was the policy, the surge in arrests, the expansion of detention, the appointment of a former private prison executive to run the agency, the cancellation of virtual hearings, the relaxation of oversight, the funneling of billions to companies that have every reason to keep the beds full and every incentive to cut costs on the people inside them.

The other America

The ten who died by suicide since Trump returned to office have names. They have families. They have stories that do not end with a screening form or a compliance report.

Chaofeng Ge was 32, a Chinese citizen who had been convicted of a crime and was awaiting an immigration hearing. He spent five days in ICE custody before he was found hanging in a shower room at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania on August 5, 2025. Five days. That is how long it took for the system to break him.

Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes was 48, Mexican. He died on February 27, 2026, at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California after being admitted to Victor Valley Global Medical Center.

Jairo García-Hernández was 27, Guatemalan. He died on February 16, 2026, at Larkin Community Hospital Behavioral Health Center in Hollywood, Florida, after more than a year in custody.

There is a file for each of them. There is a note that was collected and walked away. There is a mother in Colombia who was worried. There are children in Mexico who will never see their fathers again. There is a system that treats these deaths as statistics to be managed, not as crimes to be answered for.

Congresswoman Delia Ramirez said it plainly in May 2026: “2026 is shaping to be the deadliest year for immigrants in ICE detention centers. The torture, cruelty, and inhumanity inflicted on our neighbors result in desperation and death.”

The question is not why the system failed to protect them. The question is why the system is allowed to exist at all, in defiance of every decent standard this country claims to hold, profitable beyond measure, and shipping body bags while the people who run it count their money and write their checks to the man in the White House.