Cuban immigrant dies in Georgia detention center, ICE tells Congress

A Cuban immigrant died inside an immigration detention center in Georgia earlier this week, according to a congressional notification sent on Friday and reviewed by the Guardian.

The Cuban man, identified as 33-year-old Denny Adán González, died inside the privately run Stewart detention center. His death is being investigated as a suicide.

The man is the 18th person to die in 2026 in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency tasked with carrying out Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.

On Thursday evening, CoreCivic, the private company that runs the Stewart facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, confirmed the death in a statement to the Guardian, without providing many details.

According to the company, on Tuesday night at around 10.26pm, CoreCivic staff inside the facility “called a medical emergency after finding an unresponsive individual inside of his living area”.

The CoreCivic statement added that emergency medical services arrived and attempted to save the man’s life, “but the individual was pronounced deceased before being transported from the facility”.

ICE’s notification to Congress says the “suspected cause of death is suicide, but the official cause remains under investigation”. The notification said González was pronounced dead at 11.11pm on Tuesday night.

González is the fourth person to die by suicide inside the Stewart detention center. In 2017 a young Panamanian immigrant died inside a solitary confinement cell, and in 2018 a Mexican man also died by suicide inside a solitary unit. Last summer, another 45-year-old man from Mexico died by suicide in Stewart.

According to the congressional notification, González had been previously deported in 2020 but re-entered the US in 2022. González was detained by ICE in January of this year after he was arrested last December for alleged “assault on a female and domestic violence”, the congressional notification says.

Comment has been requested from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE.

The Guardian wp:paragraph