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Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, national coordinator of the Defense Committees of the Revolution and member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba, triggered a wave of criticism on social media after posting a message in which he denounces the deaths of Cubans in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while ignoring the dozens of fatalities in the prisons of the regime he represents.
On his Facebook page "Gerardo de Los Cinco," Hernández wrote: "Cubans continue to die in Trump's jails, while the political opportunists of the hate industry keep people entertained with Cuba."
The post included an image with the headline “Family of Cuban man who died in ICE custody demands answers” and the overlay text “And what does María Elvira say..?”, referring to Cuban-American Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar.
The users' responses came quickly: hundreds of comments echoed the same question: "And what about the deaths in Cuba's prisons?"
The case that prompted the post is that of Denny Adán González, a 33-year-old Cuban who died on April 28 at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, after being found unconscious in his isolation cell.
ICE classified the death as "suspected suicide," a claim that the family flatly rejects.
"The guards killed him," declared his mother, Lourdes González Suárez, who demands a serious, independent, and transparent investigation into her son's death.
González is not the only case. So far in 2026, at least three Cubans have died in ICE custody: Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 years old, passed away on January 3 in Fort Bliss, Texas, and his autopsy determined homicide by asphyxiation, contradicting ICE's initial statement; and Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27 years old, died on April 12 at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, also classified as "suspected suicide."
The total number of immigrants who died in ICE custody in 2025 was 33, the highest in over two decades, according to Physicians for Human Rights.
What Hernández's critics emphasize most strongly is the contradiction between his selective outrage and the history of the Cuban regime in its own prisons.
Human rights organizations documented 24 deaths in Cuban prisons and 160 reports of torture in just the first half of 2025, according to the Cuban Prisons Documentation Center.
In all of 2024, at least 40 inmates died in prisons on the island, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
Between January 2022 and January 2024, Cubalex documented 56 deaths in Cuban state custody, including sentenced prisoners, individuals detained in police stations, and those who died during military service.
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