In Private Prisons, 64% of Deaths of Mexicans in ICE Custody

ByArturo Sánchez Jiménez

This article by Arturo Sánchez Jiménez originally appeared in the July 13, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The Mexicans who have died in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) so far under Donald Trump’s second administration have not, for the most part, been under the direct responsibility of the U.S. government, but rather that of private companies. Since the start of that administration, 17 nationals have died: 14 while in ICE custody and three during immigration operations. Of those 14 deaths, nine—64 percent—occurred in facilities operated by two companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, and one more during a transfer also handled by GEO Group, according to the official records and the companies’ web pages reviewed by La Jornada.

No facility concentrates as many deaths as the Adelanto Processing Center, in California: there, four nationals have died, all in GEO Group’s custody. It was precisely after one of those deaths that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) demanded, back in March, an immediate review of the site for “serious omissions and evident deficiencies” in medical care.

That March complaint proved insufficient. Last Thursday, following the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo—shot by an ICE agent during an operation—Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco Álvarez announced that Mexico is moving from diplomatic complaint to direct legal action against the private companies.

The SRE will send “cease and desist” letters—a figure of U.S. law for initiating a civil action—to the operators of the centers where Mexicans have died, in addition to asking the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (FGR) to file criminal complaints before U.S. authorities. Velasco himself explained that these letters seek to have the companies “stop carrying out these actions” and “change these conditions,” though he clarified that each company’s responsibility “will have to be determined through the corresponding proceedings.”

Medical complications are the most frequent individual cause among the 17 deaths: six cases, almost all documented in centers operated by GEO Group or CoreCivic. The file of José Guadalupe Ramos Solano, detained in Adelanto, records that the nursing staff noted “readings that ranged between 123 and more than 600” milligrams of glucose per deciliter for nearly a month, without his being transferred to a hospital until the day of his collapse. That of Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, also in Adelanto, documents that he “suffered a seizure” and presented kidney and coagulation abnormalities hours before dying of cardiac arrest. And that of Óscar Duarte Rascón, originally detained by CoreCivic in Eloy, Arizona, describes months of hospitalization for a neurodegenerative disease before doctors determined that he would no longer be resuscitated.

GEO Group, the company with the most deaths of Mexicans in its custody, has also been the most economically benefited by the expansion of immigration detention: it reported a profit of 254 million dollars in 2025, almost 700 percent more than a year earlier, attributed by the company itself to new contracts with ICE. The Adelanto contract alone would represent an additional 31 million dollars in annual profit when operating at maximum capacity, according to figures the company reported to its investors and that were cited in a class-action lawsuit filed this past January before a federal court in California.

Expanding Capacity

According to civil organizations, ICE does not directly operate most of its centers: it contracts them out to private companies or to county jails, through agreements that allow it to expand its detention capacity without building or administering its own facilities. In March 2026, an average of more than a thousand people was detained daily in 20 of the largest facilities in the country, and 19 of those 20 were operated by private companies, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice based on ICE records.

For the American Civil Liberties Union, the pattern is no coincidence: ICE’s private contractors are “incentivized to cut medical staff and deny care” in order to maximize the return for their shareholders.