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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tICE says Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, \u201cdied of a presumed suicide.\u201d His official cause of death remains under investigation.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tICE says Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, \u201cdied of a presumed suicide.\u201d His official cause of death remains under investigation.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Photo by vladislav\/AdobeStock<\/p>\n
A Mexican teenager has died while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in South Florida, according to a statement<\/a> from the agency.<\/p>\n Royer Perez-Jimenez, a 19-year-old from Mexico, died on March 16 at the Glades County Detention Center \u2014 a county jail on the western shore of Lake Okeechobee that has long housed immigrant detainees and been the subject of allegations of abuse<\/a>. According to ICE, Perez \u201cdied of a presumed suicide,\u201d although his official cause of death remains under investigation.<\/p>\n He appears to be the youngest person to die in ICE custody since President Donald Trump took office again in January 2025, according to ICE records<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to ICE\u2019s statement, at around 2:30 a.m. on March 16, a Glades County detention officer found Perez \u201cunconscious and unresponsive.\u201d Staff began CPR, and medical personnel arrived minutes later, determined he was without a pulse, and took over resuscitation efforts before requesting emergency medical services.<\/p>\n At around 2:40 a.m., fire rescue officials arrived and \u201cinitiated-life sustaining interventions\u201d on Perez, according to the agency. He was pronounced dead at 2:51 a.m.<\/p>\n Nestor Yglesias, a spokesperson for ICE, did not respond to New Times\u2018 questions about Perez, including whether he was on suicide watch at the time of his death.<\/p>\n When Perez first entered the United States in February 2022, he encountered U.S. Border Patrol and was \u201cgranted a voluntary return\u201d to Mexico the same day, according to ICE. He later \u201cillegally reentered\u201d the U.S., although it\u2019s unclear when, exactly. <\/p>\n On January 22, Perez was arrested by the Volusia County Sheriff\u2019s Office and charged with impersonation and resisting an officer, both misdemeanors, according to an arrest report obtained by New Times (although ICE\u2019s statement characterized the impersonation charge as a felony). Police say they tried to pull Perez over while he was riding a scooter because he was crossing traffic lanes without using a crosswalk. But he allegedly refused to stop and gave officers multiple false names. According to the report, Perez eventually told police he had \u201coverstayed his visa and is currently in the United States illegally,\u201d and said he had no documentation to prove his name or date of birth.<\/p>\n ICE placed an immigration detainer on him that same day, the agency says, and he was transferred into ICE custody on February 21 before being moved to Glades County Detention Center on February 26.<\/p>\n ICE says that Perez was evaluated by medical staff at intake and didn\u2019t report any behavioral health issues, including answering \u201cno\u201d to all suicide screening questions.<\/p>\n Glades County Detention Center has long faced allegations of abuse. In 2022, 17 members of Congress asked that it be closed, citing<\/a> immigrants being \u201csubject to racist abuse, often resulting in verbal abuse and violence; sexual abuse, including sexual voyeurism by guards who have watched women shower; life-endangering COVID-19 and medical neglect, including a near-fatal carbon monoxide leak last November; and regular exposure to highly dangerous levels of a toxic disinfectant chemical spray linked to severe medical harms and long-term damage to reproductive health.\u201d<\/p>\n At least\u00a036 people have died<\/a>\u00a0in ICE custody since January 2025, according to ICE.<\/p>\n In South Florida, the deaths have included 29-year-old\u00a0Honduran Genry Ruiz-Guillen<\/a>, who died of complications from schizoaffective disorder at Krome Detention Center; 44-year-old\u00a0Ukrainian national Maksym Chernyak<\/a>\u00a0(also in ICE custody at Krome), whose wife told NBC 6 he didn\u2019t receive adequate medical care; 44-year-old\u00a0Marie Ange Blaise of Haiti\u00a0<\/a>at the Broward Transitional Center; 49-year-old Canadian\u00a0Johnny Noviello<\/a>, who died after six weeks in immigration detention in downtown Miami;\u00a0Hasan Ali Moh\u2019D Saleh<\/a>, a 67-year-old Jordanian man who died of suspected cardiac arrest while in ICE custody at Miami\u2019s Larkin Community Hospital; and Jairo Garcia-Hernandez<\/a>, a 27-year-old who died in ICE custody at Larkin Community Hospital.<\/p>\n This is a breaking story and will be updated as events warrant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE says Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, \u201cdied of a presumed suicide.\u201d His official cause of death remains under investigation.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1841,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-198945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-immigration","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}