A 19-year-old Mexican migrant died at a Florida county detention center where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held immigrant detainees, according to ICE, renewing scrutiny of deaths in immigration custody. ICE said an officer found Royer Perez-Jimenez unconscious and unresponsive at 2:34 a.m. Monday at the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) northeast of Fort Myers.
ICE said the officers who found Perez-Jimenez “immediately” called for a medical emergency in the dormitory and that staff started cardiopulmonary resuscitation. ICE said two medical personnel arrived a few minutes later and determined Perez-Jimenez to be without pulse, before the arrival of fire rescue deputies who “initiated life-sustaining interventions.” ICE said Perez-Jimenez was pronounced dead at 2:51 a.m., 17 minutes after he was found dead.
ICE said Perez-Jimenez “died of presumed suicide,” though an official cause of death remains under investigation. The Office of the District 21 Medical Examiner did not respond to an AP request for an autopsy report, and Florida prosecutors referred information requests to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. attorney general’s office, according to the report.
The death was the latest in a series of reported fatalities in ICE custody since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025. ICE custody deaths since January 2025 have reached 46, according to a count by The Associated Press, and the report said 13 immigrants have died in ICE custody since the beginning of this year. The report also said Perez-Jimenez was the youngest to die in ICE custody since the start of Trump’s second term.
ICE said Perez-Jimenez was arrested Jan. 21 by police in Edgewater, Florida, where he was charged with misdemeanor crimes of providing a false name and resisting an officer, according to a police report. ICE said he was transferred to federal custody a month later. In response to his death, condemnation spread within immigrant-rights advocacy circles, with Detention Watch Network’s communications director, Carly Pérez Fernández, saying the immigration detention system “deprives people of freedom, isolates people away from loved ones, and subjects people to abysmal conditions.”
The Associated Press report said the Glades County Detention Center is a facility that the Biden administration shut down but the Trump administration reopened. It also said Florida largely aligns with the Trump administration on immigration matters and houses well-known detention centers, including a facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” and Krome North Service Processing Center. Detainees have reported problems including worms in food, nonfunctioning toilets and overflowing sewage, the report said.
Separately, the Mexican government said Thursday that immigration detention deaths are “unacceptable” and called for a prompt and thorough U.S. investigation to prevent a recurrence. The Mexican government said officials from the Consulate in Miami visited the facility where Perez-Jimenez was held and asked for documentation about the case.
In the same week as Perez-Jimenez’s death, the Associated Press report said another immigrant died in ICE custody after being detained by immigration authorities—an Afghan man whose family said he had been evacuated from his country after working for years with U.S. forces—underscoring concerns raised by advocates about medical care and conditions inside detention. Longer detention nationwide has become more common during Trump’s current term, in part because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while deportation cases move through overburdened courts.