A 19-year-old Mexican has become the youngest person to die in ICE custody since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term.
Royer Perez-Jimenez died of “presumed suicide” at the Glades County Detention Center in South Florida on Monday, ICE said in a statement, although his official cause of death is still being investigated.
He was the 46th person to die in ICE custody since its inception US President Donald Trump Second term in January 2025, the 13th immigrant to die in ICE custody this year and the second this week.
ICE said an officer found Mr. Perez-Jimenez “unconscious and unresponsive” just after 2:30 a.m. on Monday.
Staff began CPR to revive him, but he was soon declared dead.
The teen, who had been in ICE custody for about a month, was arrested by sheriff’s officers in Volusia County in east-central Florida on Jan. 22 and charged with impersonating and resisting an officer, ICE said.
Mexican authorities called for a quick and thorough investigation in a statement, saying such deaths in immigration were “unacceptable”.
Officials from the Mexican Consulate in Miami visited the facility and asked authorities for documents regarding the case.
Carly Perez Fernandez of the Detention Watch Network, a national coalition that advocates against immigrant detention, said immigration detention “deprives people of liberty, separates people from loved ones, and puts people in extremely poor conditions”.
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Some detainees have reported finding insects in their food, toilets not functioning and dirty water flowing from them.
ICE has been an integral part of the administration’s crackdown on immigration since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
Its deployment led to protests in major cities such as Minneapolis, where the mother of three renee good and ICU nurse Alex Preethi Fatally shot by ICE officers.
