{"id":670702,"date":"2026-05-28T19:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670702\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T19:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:54:13","slug":"ap-report-finds-alarming-spike-in-ice-detainee-suicide-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670702\/","title":{"rendered":"AP Report Finds Alarming Spike in ICE Detainee Suicide Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"

ICE detainees\u2019 mistreatment has increased incrementally as per more suicide rates<\/p>\n

Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, at least 10 detainees have died by suicide in ICE facilities, according to an AP investigation.<\/a> This rate exceeds the growth of the detainee population, alarming public health officials and jail experts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective,\u201d said Dr. Sanjay Basu<\/a>, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who specializes in documenting increases in mortality and suicide rates among ICE detainees. \u201cThis is one of those alarming, sudden increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

To compare, ICE has typically recorded just one or no annual suicides in the past.<\/p>\n

The AP Investigation found nine of the 10 who died were Hispanic men with an average age of 32. Most had been in ICE custody for less than a month, some for a couple of days, as per AP\u2019s review of ICE data, autopsy reports and police records. Seven of the 10 had no record of violent crimes in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said suicide deaths in ICE custody remain \u201cextremely rare.\u201d<\/a> Bis said detention staff must follow protocols to protect detainees, emphasizing ICE\u2019s required annual suicide prevention training. She said detainees receive mental health services.<\/p>\n

Despite this, there have been multiple reports of detainees being denied access to mental health treatment. Brayan Rayo Garzon, a 28-year-old Colombian military veteran who had been living in the U.S. since 2023, was arrested by ICE in a Missouri jail in March of 2025 and committed suicide the following month. Rayo had been denied mental and physical health treatment and was placed in isolation after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and experiencing anxiety. Rayo had also been withheld from speaking to his mother on the phone, begging the guards to speak with her.<\/p>\n

Bis said Rayo received \u201chigh-quality medical care during his time in ICE custody.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer of New York City jails, called the rise in suicides terrifying. The increase \u201creflects failures in how the system\u2019s being operated, and particularly failures in how the first stages of coming into detention are happening so that people aren\u2019t being assessed adequately,\u201d Venters said.<\/p>\n

Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE detainees\u2019 mistreatment has increased incrementally as per more suicide rates Since President Donald Trump took office in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,46670,2483,790,74619,3,968,5642,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-670702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-dhs","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-detention","tag-news","tag-president-trump","tag-suicide","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}