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Denny Adán González, a 33-year-old Cuban, died this past Tuesday at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency confirmed this Friday.
The suspected cause of death is suicide, although the official cause remains under investigation.
Staff from CoreCivic, the private company operating the facility, found González unresponsive in his cell at 10:25 PM on Tuesday. A cutting tool was used, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation was initiated. The Webster County Emergency Medical Service continued the resuscitation efforts, but González was pronounced dead at 11:11 PM.
González had first entered the United States in May 2019 through the entry port of Hidalgo, Texas, where he was detained by the Customs and Border Protection Office and declared inadmissible.
An immigration judge ordered his deportation to Cuba in December 2019, and he was expelled in January 2020, but he reentered the country illegally and was found by Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, in April 2022.
He was released under a supervision order and reported to ICE in Charlotte, North Carolina, until September 2025.
On December 12, 2025, González was arrested by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office in Charlotte on charges of assaulting a woman and domestic violence. ICE issued an immigration detainer and transferred him to the Stewart Center in January 2026.
According to reports from The Guardian cited by Telemundo, González is the fourth person to die by suicide at the Stewart Detention Center, a facility with a documented history of at least 13 deaths since 2006.
With his passing, the number of deaths under ICE custody now totals 18 so far in 2026.
González is the third Cuban to die in ICE custody this year. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 years old, died on January 3 in Fort Bliss, Texas, in a case that the autopsy classified as homicide by asphyxiation, contradicting ICE's initial account. Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27 years old, died on April 12 at the Federal Detention Center in Miami in an apparent suicide.
The context is alarming: a study published in the medical journal JAMA revealed that the mortality rate in ICE detention centers reached 88.9 deaths per 100,000 detainees in fiscal year 2026, the highest level in 22 years, surpassing even the peak recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Las doctoras Michele Heisler y Katherine R. Peeler, autoras de un editorial que acompañó al estudio, señalaron que los hallazgos «sugieren no solo fallos aislados, sino debilidades sistémicas en la atención médica, la protección de la salud mental y la revisión de la mortalidad en una población que depende totalmente del Estado».
The total population in ICE custody grew from 40,000 to 60,000 people since Trump took office, while detentions of Cubans increased by 463% between October 2024 and the end of 2025, according to the Cato Institute.
The researchers warned that the rise in deaths "makes it difficult to consider the recent increase as an isolated clinical phenomenon rather than a warning sign of a detention system under extraordinary and deliberate pressure."
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