ICE Detainees Are Dying by Suicide in 'Alarming' Number of Cases, Report Finds: 'Something Is Going Profoundly Wrong'

The increase in suicides comes as overall deaths in ICE custody have reached record highs, with 18 so far in 2026 and 48 total since Trump returned to office

NEED TO KNOW

• Immigrants being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are dying by suicide at an “alarming” pace since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a new report by the Associated Press
• At least 10 detainees have died by suicide since January 2025, including seven since October alone
• That comes as overall deaths in ICE custody have reached record highs, with 18 so far in 2026 and 48 total since Trump returned to power, according to ICE data

Immigrants being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a network of federal lockups, county jails and tent facilities across the country are dying by suicide at an "alarming" pace since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a new report by the Associated Press published on Wednesday, May 27.

At least 10 detainees have died by suicide since January 2025, including seven since October 2025 alone. The pace "far exceeds the growth in the detainee population," the AP reports, as the Trump administration's ICE detainee population has spiked by 50% to 60,000.

The findings come as overall deaths in ICE custody have reached record highs, with 18 so far in 2026 and 48 total since Trump returned to power, according to ICE data.

The White House referred PEOPLE to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, when reached for comment on Wednesday.

DHS insisted there hasn't been a spike in deaths and claimed it was giving detainees the “best healthcare they have received their entire lives," the department said in a statement to PEOPLE.

“Suicide remains extremely rare in detention under the Trump administration,” the DHS statement read.

The most recent reported death was on April 28, when 33-year-old Cuban man Denny Adan Gonzalez was found hanging in his cell, ICE said in a May 1 statement that said the “suspected cause of death is suicide, but the official cause remains under investigation.”

In 2024, the final full year of former President Joe Biden's administration, there was one suicide in ICE custody. In 2023, there were none. The last year there was more than one in a fiscal year was in 2020, the final year of Trump's first term, when there were six.

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The AP report has triggered outrage in the U.S. and internationally, with Colombian President Gustavo Petro decrying the suicide of Brayan Rayo Garzon, a Colombian man who died on April 8, 2025, after being held in isolation for four days at a Missouri jail. "His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness," the AP reports.

In a May 27 X post, Petro said Rayo died by suicide in what Petro described as an "ICE concentration camp" run by the U.S. government and pledged his foreign ministry would issue a formal diplomatic protest with U.S. officials.

"The U.S. government must reflect on how its immigration policy is killing both Americans and Latin Americans," Petro, a leftist who has found himself at odds with the Trump administration, continued.

Se suicidio un joven colombiano en un campo de concentración de *ICE del gobierno estadounidense.

Quería llamar a su mamá y no se le permitió. Decidió el suicidio.

La cancillería colombiana debe entregar nota de protesta y el gobierno de EEUU debe reflexionar cómo la política… https://t.co/SF5k6IrFNd

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) May 27, 2026

The White House initially referred PEOPLE to DHS when reached for comment on Petro's remarks and did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for clarification.

DHS does not typically handle diplomatic disputes between the White House and foreign leaders and did not comment on Petro's response in the statement emailed to PEOPLE.

Following similar outrage over the deaths of Mexican nationals, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum ordered her diplomats in the U.S. to conduct daily consular visits to ICE facilities in April, reports the AP. Her government condemned those facilities as “incompatible with human rights standards and the protection of human life.”

Epidemiologists and other medical experts told the AP that the suicides in ICE custody — which previously occurred typically once or not at all each year — were cause for alarm and a sign of inadequacies in care, at a minimum.

“Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective,” Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who co-wrote a study on ICE detainees' rising mortality and suicide rates, told the AP. “This is one of those alarming, sudden increases.”

The data analyzed by the AP found that nine of the 10 suicides were Hispanic men, with the other being a Chinese citizen. Their average age was 32.

Despite characterizations by Trump and his administration that the immigrants they detain are the "worst of the worst" and violent criminals, killers, and psychopaths, seven of the 10 men had no violent crimes on their record in the U.S.

"Detainees are facing a public health crisis behind detention walls and this surge of suicides should alarm everybody," Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley wrote on X on Wednesday. "There is no reforming this. We must abolish ICE."

The report comes as protests outside of a New Jersey federal immigration detention center this week were met with force by federal authorities, as Democrats alleged inhumane conditions inside the facility and say detainees are participating in a hunger strike that is in its fourth day.

New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim was pepper-sprayed on Monday, May 25, as he attempted to de-escalate the conflict between protesters and federal law enforcement who were deploying chemical weapons on the crowd gathered outside the Newark, N.J., facility known as Delaney Hall.

"I heard from a woman who is pregnant who is saying she is not able to get medical care," Kim said on CNN on Tuesday, May 26, after he was let into the facility on the orders of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "Yesterday, I talked to a man who has stage 3 lung cancer that's not getting the medical care that he needs."

Don't let ICE and this administration lie to you. I saw inside Delaney Hall with my own eyes. The conditions are absolutely unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/10YE28P1f9

— Senator Andy Kim (@SenatorAndyKim) May 27, 2026

Federal authorities have denied a hunger strike is occurring and mocked Kim for getting caught in the crossfire, including Mullin — Kim's former Senate colleague from Oklahoma — during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday.

More Democratic lawmakers entered the facility on Wednesday and came out to report "inhumane conditions," as described to the AP by New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“We will shut this center down. We will shut it down,” Espaillat pledged.

The day Rayo, the Colombian man who died by suicide in a Missouri jail in April 2025, died, he wrote a note to a guard, pleading to speak to his mother. A photo of the note preserved by the Missouri State Highway Patrol was published by the AP.

“I know you have family, and you know that they worry about us,” he wrote in Spanish. “God bless you.”

“I feel in my heart that she's very worried about me,” he added.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.

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