The unprecedented number of suicide deaths among ICE detainees has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. An Associated Press investigation found that at least 10 detainees, all men, have died by suicide since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, a pace that far exceeds the growth in the detainee population. The majority of those deaths were from natural causes and experts say many of them would have been preventable with timely medical care.
In this image from video provided by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee Brayan Rayo Garzon looks towards a surveillance camera in the Phelps County jail in Rolla, Mo.
, on April 7, 2025, shortly before he died by suicide. 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. He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell.
An autopsy determined he killed himself. Rayo’s April 2025 death was the first suicide in a spike among ICE detainees that has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. They said the unprecedented number of suicide deaths is an indication that authorities are not providing adequate care and support to detainees.
An Associated Press investigation found that at least 10 detainees, all men, have died by suicide since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, a pace that far exceeds the growth in the detainee population. Since October, seven deaths have been classified as suicides, a number that is already the most for any fiscal year in the agency’s history. ICE has usually recorded one or no such deaths annually.
Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective, said Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who cowrote a study documenting the increase in mortality and suicide rates among ICE detainees. This is one of those alarming, sudden increases. The reasons behind any suicide are complex, and each death often has multiple contributing factors, according to experts.
ICE detainees report intense stress after being detained, fear of being returned to countries where their safety may be jeopardized, and frustration and loneliness over the inability to communicate due to language barriers. Detainees can also feel helplessness because of the complexity surrounding immigration law. Unlike those in the criminal justice system, most detainees do not have lawyers and their detention on immigration violations is not meant to be punitive.
ICE becomes responsible for their well-being when they enter detention, and experts say well-run lockups should have few, if any, suicides. ICE detention centers have repeatedly fallen short in ways that violate ICE’s own standards. An examination of the 10 suicide deaths found the men died across ICE’s detention network, including at centers long run by private contractors and county jails who recently became ICE partners.
The majority of those deaths were from natural causes and experts say many of them would have been preventable with timely medical care
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