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Lourdes González Suárez, mother of Denny Adán González, the 33-year-old Cuban who died on April 28 in a detention center for migrants in the state of Georgia, while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), demanded justice and a "serious and thorough" investigation to clarify the circumstances surrounding her son's death.
González made a statement, sent to CiberCuba, in which he expressed profound sorrow over the loss of his son, while also urging for an independent and transparent investigation into the events that led to the tragic outcome at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin.
"My son was not a file or a number. He was a person with dreams, with a family, and with a future that was tragically interrupted," the mother wrote in her letter. "The pain I feel is indescribable. I have lost my son, and with him, a part of my life that can never be recovered. His absence has left a deep and irreparable void in our family."
Denny Adán's mother revealed that, according to the information provided to the family, the day before his passing, an incident occurred inside the facility involving a staff member, after which her son was moved to a cell. "I request that this matter be clarified in a complete, transparent, and independent manner, as it is essential to understand what transpired," she stated.
«As a mother, I need to know the truth. I cannot accept uncertainty or incomplete explanations. I request a serious and thorough investigation to determine exactly what happened and under what circumstances», demanded González. «Behind this death is a shattered family and many unanswered questions.»
She also made "a call to the world" so that her son's story "does not remain in silence," and urged people to share the statement "not to generate conflict, but for the truth to come to light and to ensure that such events do not happen again."
"No mother should have to experience this pain," she lamented. "Today, I cry for my son, and I know I will never be able to hold him again, but I will fight to know the truth and to ensure that other mothers can embrace their own."
On Friday, May 1, three days after the death of the Cuban immigrant Denny Adán González, ICE issued an official statement in which they made the news public. The text indicated the "suspicion" that the cause of his death may have been suicide, but it then noted that "the official cause is still under investigation."
The federal agency explained that Denny Adán was found unconscious in his cell around 10:25 p.m. by CoreCivic staff, the private company that operates the facility; that a restraint tool was used and cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts were initiated.
According to the report, the Emergency Medical Services of Webster County continued their efforts to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at 11:11 PM, 46 minutes after being found.
Immigration history and arrest of Denny Adán González
Denny Adán Gonzáles entered the United States for the first time in May 2019 through the port of entry in Hidalgo, Texas, where he was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and declared inadmissible.
An immigration judge ordered his deportation to Cuba in December of that year, and he was expelled in January 2020. However, he re-entered the country illegally in April 2022, when he was intercepted by the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas. He was subsequently released under supervision, with a requirement to make periodic reports 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 a detainer order and transferred him to the Stewart Center in January 2026.
Alarming statistics
The death of Denny Adán González is the eighteenth under ICE custody in 2026 and the fifth attributed to apparent suicide. Additionally, he is the third Cuban to die under custody of the federal agency this year, following Geraldo Lunas Campos —whose autopsy classified his death as homicide by asphyxiation, contradicting ICE's official version— and Aled Damien Carbonell Betancourt, a 27-year-old who died at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
According to information from The Guardian cited by Telemundo, Denny Adán would reportedly be the fourth person to take their own life at the Stewart Detention Center, which has a documented history of at least 13 deaths since 2006.
A study published in the medical journal JAMA on April 16 revealed that the mortality rate in ICE detention centers reached historic levels: 88.9 deaths per 100,000 detainees in fiscal year 2026, the highest level in 22 years, even surpassing the peak recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The arrests of Cubans by ICE increased by 463% between October 2024 and the end of 2025, according to the Cato Institute.
Reactions to a death surrounded by questions
What Denny Adán's mother expressed in her statement aligns with the documentation provided by the researcher Andrew Free, as cited by the organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), who noted that González was in solitary confinement at the time of his death, following an alleged altercation with a guard that reportedly left him unconscious.
The newspaper Los Angeles Times dedicated a report on the case of the Cuban man, whose death was considered a "new tragedy" that shakes the U.S. immigration system. The article highlighted the fact that Denny Adán "was allegedly in solitary confinement at the time of his death, a practice internationally denounced as torture."
Amílcar Valencia, executive director of the organization El Refugio, stated to the newspaper that "Stewart Detention Center has a reputation for being one of the deadliest detention centers in the country" and demanded the closure of the facility and the termination of the contract with CoreCivic.
For her part, Priyanka Bhatt, a lawyer for Project South, stated that "the responsibility for the inconceivable number of deaths lies with ICE and the private prison corporation CoreCivic."
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