A 19-year-old Mexican has become the youngest person to die in ICE custody since the start of Donald Trump’s second term.Royer Perez-Jimenez “died of presumed suicide” on Monday at the Glades County Detention Centre in south Florida, ICE said in a statement, although his official cause of death is still being investigated.
He was also the 46th person to die in ICE custody since the start of US President Donald Trump’s 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 2.30am on Monday.Staff began performing CPR in a bid to revive him, but he was declared dead soon after.
The teenager, who had been in ICE custody for around a month, was arrested on 22 January by sheriff’s officers in Volusia County in east-central Florida and charged with impersonating and resisting an officer, ICE said.Such deaths in immigration were “unacceptable”, Mexican officials said in a statement, while calling for a prompt and thorough investigation.
Officials from the Mexican consulate in Miami visited the facility and asked authorities for documentation about the case.Carly Pérez Fernández, from Detention Watch Network, a national coalition advocating against immigrant detention, said immigration detention “deprives people of freedom, isolates people away from loved ones, and subjects people to abysmal conditions”.
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Some detainees have reported finding worms in their food, nonfunctioning toilets and overflowing sewage.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 has led to protests in major cities, such as in Minneapolis, where mother-of-three Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti were fatally shot by ICE officers.
