Thirteen people held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including two in Georgia, have died so far this year, a higher-than average fatality rate that has prompted concern among the state’s two Democratic senators.
The deaths of Abelardo Avellaneda-Delgado and Jesus Molina, both Mexican nationals, were highlighted in a letter Tuesday from U.S, Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting ICE director Todd Lyons in which they accused the agency of failing to meet its guidelines for reporting fatalities.
ICE is required to publish an interim notice of any detainee death on its own website within 48 hours, a timeframe that the senators say has frequently not been met.
Such delays, the senators said, hinder congressional oversight and leave “families in the dark as to their loved ones’ fates,”
The Current GA has previously reported on unsafe conditions in the ICE detention center in Charlton County, where an Indian national, Jaspal Singh, died in 2024 after a doctor delayed treatment for his heart condition A review conducted by the federal agency itself concluded that medical care at the Folkston ICE Processing Center “deviated beyond safe limits and directly contributed to his death.”
The senators’criticism of the agency comes as the Trump administration pursues its mass deportation strategy, ramping up recruitment of ICE agents with the aid of $75 billion in extra funding and expanding immigration detention facilities with the help of $45 billion more.
After receiving fresh contracts this summer, Folkston is set to expand to 3,000 beds, making it the nation’s largest ICE detention center.
The 13 deaths confirmed by ICE between Jan. 1-Aug. 31 are more fatalities than occurred in each of the last seven years since 2018, except for one, according to ICE data. In 2020, the last year of the first Trump administration, 18 people died in ICE custody.
The senators, in their six-page letter, asked HHS and ICE to provide information no later than Oct. 31 about the 13 deaths and about the administration’s plan to prevent further fatalities.
‘Became unresponsive’
The two fatalities so far this year in Georgia did not occur at Folkston, according to ICE reports.
According to ICE’s “Death Detainee Report,” agents operating out of Atlanta “encountered” 68-year-old Avellaneda at the Lowndes County jail in Valdosta on April 10, but it does not say why he was being held there.
Avellaneda had entered the U.S. on an unknown date and location, ordered sent back to Mexico by an Arizona judge in 1990, and reentered the U.S. “on an unknown date and location,” the ICE report said.
On May 5, Avellaneda became unresponsive while being transported by private contract security officers to the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, some 140 miles away, according to the ICE report.
Stewart, a private prison operated by CoreCivic under contract with ICE, is a facility with a capacity of approximately 1,700 inmates, and, like Folkston, has a history of poor conditions.
Security guards in the transport vehicle called for emergency medical services to their location in Webster County, a 20-minute drive from the detention center. Around 40 minutes later medical teams arrived to find Avellanda without a pulse or respiration, and 50 minutes after the original call, a county coroner arrived and pronounced him dead. ICE publicly disclosed Avellanda’s death three days later.
‘Unlawfully present’
The ICE report on Avellanda says that between February 2005 and May 2021, he was charged by “several” unspecified “law enforcement agencies” with “crimes ranging from marijuana possession to simple battery – family violence and cruelty to children, 3rd degree.”
Earlier this year, he was arrested in Echols County for a “probation violation.”
The report does not provide information as to why Avellanda was never prosecuted for those alleged crimes.
Molina, who died on June 7, originally entered the U.S. “on an unknown date and location” sometime before 1999, according to his “Detainee Death Report.” At that time, he was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents in California and later ordered removed from the U.S., according to ICE.
The 45-year-old slipped back into the U.S. where, between 2000 and 2025, he was charged by five Georgia law enforcement agencies with crimes including simple battery, child molestation and false imprisonment. The report said Molina was convicted on the latter charge and served nearly two-and-a-half years in jail.
In April, Molina was convicted again, this time for violating his probation.
While he was serving his sentence in a state prison in Jackson, federal immigration officials determined Molina was “unlawfully present” in the U.S. and transferred him to the Stewart Detention Center on May 15.
Third death by suicide
At Stewart, Molina was treated for a series of ailments, including hypertension and mildly elevated blood pressure. On June 7, he was found “unresponsive” in his cell “with a cloth ligature around his neck tied to the bottom rail of the top bunk.”
Medical personnel at Stewart attempted to revive him, and he was transferred to Sumter Hospital in Americus. He was pronounced dead there 90 minutes after guards at Stewart first raised the alarm. ICE disclosed his death four days later.
According to figures cited by the two senators, Molina’s death marked the 13th death — and the third death by suicide — at Stewart since ICE began holding immigrants in the facility in 2006.