The Cuban Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27 years old, died last Sunday at the Federal Detention Center in Miami while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in what authorities describe as a suspected attempt to take his own life.
The official statement from ICE describes him as "an illegal Cuban immigrant with a criminal record."
According to the text, an officer at the center discovered him in his cell at 6:30 am on April 12th.
"The officer immediately requested a medical emergency, and the staff began cardiopulmonary resuscitation maneuvers. The Miami City Fire and Rescue Department arrived at the scene and continued the resuscitation efforts. Despite the measures taken to save his life, at approximately 7:31 am, the Miami Fire and Rescue Department declared Carbonell-Betancourt deceased," the report details.
The agency did not issue the official statement confirming the death until Thursday, five days after the incident.
ICE specified that "Carbonell-Betancourt died from an apparent suicide; however, the official cause of death is still under investigation."
Carbonell-Betancourt entered the United States on October 30, 2024, when he was intercepted by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which issued him a notice to appear as an undocumented immigrant and released him on conditional parole.
His situation became complicated on November 20, 2025, when a Hialeah police officer found him in an abandoned farmers' market at 11:30 PM.
Unable to provide identification documents, the young man attempted to flee, prompting the officer to pursue him and subdue him with a taser.
The incident resulted in charges of violently resisting an officer, although the state prosecutor later downgraded the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
ICE located him in the Miami-Dade County Jail on November 22, 2025, and transferred him into their custody on February 11, 2026, pending deportation proceedings.
The agency notified the Embassy of Cuba in Washington and the young man's close relatives of his passing.
Carbonell-Betancourt is the third Cuban to die in ICE custody during Donald Trump's second term, and the second immigrant detained in Florida whose death is reported as an alleged suicide in less than a month.
The other two Cuban cases are those of Isidro Pérez, 75 years old, who died on June 26, 2025 at HCA Kendall Hospital in Miami while being held at the Krome Detention Center under deportation proceedings.
The second is Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 years old, who died on January 3rd in the Camp East Montana detention center in El Paso, Texas, in a case that the autopsy classified as homicide by asphyxiation caused by compression of the neck and torso, currently under investigation by the FBI.
On the same day that ICE announced the death of Carbonell-Betancourt, the resignation of the agency's acting director, Todd Lyons was reported, effective May 31, amid controversies over ICE's aggressive tactics and the rising number of deaths in detention.
According to an analysis by The Miami Herald based on press releases, death reports, autopsies, and government documents, at least 49 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to the White House, nine of them by alleged suicide.
A study published in the medical journal JAMA on April 16 revealed that the mortality rate in ICE detention centers reached 88.9 deaths per 100,000 detainees, the highest level in 22 years, even surpassing the peak recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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