Cuban man is 18th person to die in US ICE custody this year: Monitor

Rights group says believed suicide underscores need for more oversight amid Trump’s mass deportation drive.A 33-year-old Cuban man has died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, believed to be by suicide, the agency has said.A monitoring group on Friday said Denny Adan Gonzalez was the 18th person to die in US immigration custody this year amid the administration of US President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive. He is also the fifth death believed to be by suicide, according to Physicians for Human Rights, which warned of a pattern of “increasing suicides”.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Rights groups, Milwaukee leaders slam ICE’s arrest of Palestinian advocatelist 2 of 3Lula asks US to send ex-intelligence chief to Brazil after ICE arrestlist 3 of 3Scholar Rumeysa Ozturk returns to Turkiye following Trump deportation pushend of listIn its statement, ICE said Gonzalez had been arrested on December 12, 2025, in Charlotte, North Carolina for “assault on a female and domestic violence”.He was transferred to ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia in January. It added that he had previously been expelled from the US but re-entered without documentation in 2022.On Tuesday, Gonzalez was found unresponsive in his cell and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, according to ICE. He was discovered by staff from CoreCivic, a private prison company that partners with ICE.Monitors have said 2026 is on track to have the highest death toll in ICE custody in the agency’s 22-year history. Last year already saw a record number of deaths in immigration custody, with 33 confirmed.The uptick comes amid a surge in immigration detentions under Trump, which reached a high of more than 70,000 people in detention in January of this year. That was up from just less than 40,000 people in immigration detention when Trump took office in January 2025, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) tracker.