Mexico says it will protest the death of another Mexican citizen, one of about 14 detainees to die in custody this year.
Another detainee has died at an immigration facility in the United States, authorities have announced, raising concerns about the growing death toll of immigrants in government custody amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said on Monday that Mexican immigrant Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano was found unresponsive at a processing centre in California last week and was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Ramos-Solano was one of around 14 detainees, including several Mexican immigrants, to die in ICE custody this year.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed concern about the trend on Monday.
“We’re now going to take further action. We’re going to take several steps to protest the death of yet another Mexican national in the United States,” Sheinbaum told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.
ICE had said that Ramos-Solano, who was taken into the agency’s custody last month, suffered from several medical conditions, including diabetes and hypertension.
“He received constant medical care while he was in custody, including daily medication to treat his illness,” it said.
But rights advocates have raised questions over the medical care that immigrants receive at ICE facilities as the death toll has continued to climb.
At least 32 people died in ICE custody last year, compared to 11 in 2024, the year before Trump took office.
Earlier this month, Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal, a 41-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, also died at an immigration facility.
ICE said the agency had transported him to a hospital in Texas after he complained “of shortness of breath and chest pains”.
The agency also said Mexican immigrant Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, died of “presumed suicide” at a detention centre in Florida on March 16.
ICE often tries to portray immigrants who die at its facilities as hardened criminals. But some of the detainees had no criminal history or only minor offences committed years ago.
For example, Jimenez was only charged – not convicted – of “misdemeanor fraud for impersonation and resisting an officer”.
Some of the fatalities have also spurred calls for independent investigations.
When Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos died in January, ICE initially said he had experienced “medical distress”.
But a medical examiner later ruled Campos’s death as a homicide – meaning caused by another person, prompting the authorities to change their version of the events.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, claimed that Campos was trying to take his own life.
“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life. During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness,” DHS said in a statement on January 16.
Since returning to the White House for his second presidential term in January 2025, Trump has launched a nationwide campaign to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
The crackdown has also targeted immigrants who are in the US legally, including permanent residents, for engaging in activism against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Federal agents killed two people in Minnesota in January during a weeks-long immigration enforcement operation that sparked protests and outrage across the country.
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