The brother of Demi Adán González, the 33-year-old Cuban found dead on April 29 in a solitary confinement cell at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, reported that the official account of the cause of death has changed without explanation, shifting from an alleged ingestion of a chemical substance to hanging.
Dayán Hernández González, who resides in Spain, reported that a forensic officer contacted his brother's partner in North Carolina to inform her of the change in the account.
"He says he called and now they're saying my brother hanged himself," Dayán declared, visibly bewildered by the contradiction. "It's not any of that anymore; now they're saying he hanged himself."
Dayán outright rejects this new version and deems it absurd.
Its central argument is the Christian faith that her brother had embraced in the last months of his life. "How can you now say that he hanged himself? Because my brother had converted, he was going to church, reading the Bible, he got baptized, I have video and everything," she claimed.
According to Dayán, Demi's baptism took place between June and December of 2025 in North Carolina, and the late individual's partner can confirm the exact date and the church they attended together.
In addition to his faith, Dayán points out his brother's family responsibilities as another element that makes the official version implausible. "He has left two orphaned children," he said, referring to one child in Cuba and another in the United States.
Demi had even tried to bring the mother of the first child from Mexico, but she was unable to cross the border.
"My brother was a very good person, very helpful," emphasized Dayán, who claims to have video evidence of the baptism to support his testimony.
The mother of Demi, Lourdes González Suárez, who remains in Cuba, had already called for an independent investigation and stated that "the guards killed him." A cellmate of Demi also questioned the suicide narrative, pointing out that the Cuban got along well with everyone at the center.
According to previous accounts, days before dying, Demi had an altercation with a guard from CoreCivic, the private contractor that operates the facility, and was immediately transferred to solitary confinement, known among inmates as "the hole", where he died days later.
The death of Demi is the third of a Cuban under ICE custody in 2026. Previously, Geraldo Lunas Campos died, whose autopsy determined homicide by asphyxiation, contradicting ICE's version, and Aled Damián Carbonell Betancourt, 27 years old, at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
In total, 18 immigrants have died in ICE custody in 2026, the highest number in 22 years, according to Physicians for Human Rights.
The official investigation into the case is being handled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Meanwhile, the family of Demi is seeking funds to repatriate her remains to Cuba, with no authorities having provided a coherent explanation regarding the circumstances of her death so far.
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