A 19-year-old Mexican man died on Monday of what authorities said was “presumed suicide” in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, the agency announced, marking the 13th death nationwide this year.

Royer Perez-Jimenez was found “unresponsive” by a detention officer at 2:34 a.m., according to a press release. The report states that, after medical services’ attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful, he was pronounced dead at 2:51 a.m.

“He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation,” the agency said.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, Perez-Jimenez is the eighth person to die in immigration detention Florida. So far, over 40 people have died nationwide in ICE custody during the Trump administration. The death toll ranges from two men killed by an active shooter at an ICE office in Dallas to people who have died from natural causes.

So far in March alone at least four people have died while in ICE custody, according to government press releases.

Perez-Jimenez entered ICE custody on Feb. 21, the release states, less than a month before his death. During his medical intake, the agency said he said “no” to all suicide screening questions and denied behavioral issues and concerns. The Miami Herald has requested the autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office.

Under the Trump administration, ICE has started focusing on the criminal histories of detainees as part of their death announcements. Perez-Jimenez came into the United States in February 2022, the agency said, but he voluntarily returned to Mexico that same day after border authorities came across him. It is not known when he returned to the U.S.

The Herald located court and police records matching the ICE notice for a man Volusia County Sheriff’s officers pulled over for crossing lanes while driving a scooter on Jan. 21.

He sped away, and when police came across him again a short distance away, he stopped on the sidewalk. An officer ordered him to step off the scooter and sit on the ground – but it’s unclear if he understood, as the officers later had to call for a translator.

When Perez-Jimenez failed to get off the scooter, an officer “attempted to escort the male subject to the ground.” He tensed up and pulled away, the report said, and the officer “attempted a leg sweep to take the subject to the ground.”

On the ground, Perez-Jimenez pulled away and put his hands under his body, the report said. The officers arrested him for resisting an officer without violence.

During a later interview, Perez-Jimenez gave police a false name. He was charged with two misdemeanors for impersonating someone else and resisting an officer, according to the report. So was another individual whom officers came across who was “dressed exactly the same as the first male, coming in from the same location, riding on the exact same make/model scooter.” That second person also gave cops a false name.

The next day, on Jan. 22, the Department of Homeland Security filed an immigration detainer requesting that Perez-Jimenez be released into ICE custody. The request noted him posing “a risk to national security, border security, or public safety.”

On Feb. 19, Perez-Jimenez pleaded no contest and was found guilty on both charges, according to court records. He was transferred into ICE custody two days later.

Another man who died in Texas on Jan. 3 was initially described as a suicide by DHS, but a medical examiner concluded the death was a homicide. Witnesses told the Washington Post and his family that Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died after a struggle with guards.

Emanuel Cleeford Damas, a 56-year-old man from Haiti, died on Mar. 6 at a hospital in Arizona after nearly six months in custody. ICE said that doctors who treated him there ruled the preliminary cause of death as unknown, and that a physician days prior at another hospital had said a likely diagnosis for his serious condition could be septic shock due to pneumonia. But his family told the Haitian Times that he died from a tooth infection that doctors treated too late.

ICE repeatedly emphasizes in death notifications that it’s committed to offering comprehensive medical care. Following media reports of poor medical care, the agency’s chief medical officer for the Department of Homeland Security said last month that “the medical care in ICE detention is the best care they have received in their entire lives.”

But the number of deaths has caused widespread alarm nationwide.

Lawyers, advocates and community leaders have long criticized healthcare and living conditions at ICE facilities across the United States. Those criticisms have sharpened under President Trump, as detainee population and deaths have exponentially increased. There were 57,501 people in ICE custody on Feb. 7, 2026, according to Syracuse University researchers, compared to 19,304 Feb. 9, 2025.

Last year, the Herald investigated the deaths of a Ukrainian stroke victim and a Honduran man after they were detained at Krome North Service Processing Center. While the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Department ruled that both men died of natural causes, the Herald found evidence of what experts described as questionable medical care.

The Glades County Sheriff, whose office operates the facility through a contract with ICE, declined to comment about Perez-Jimenez’s death.

The Glades County Sheriff’s Office started holding up to 500 immigrants for ICE under a contract with the agency in April 2025, three years after the Biden administration halted the contract, citing “persistent and ongoing concerns” about detainee healthcare. For years, activists had pushed the federal government to stop working with the facility to house immigrants.

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