Brayan Rayo Garzon, an ICE detainee in a Missouri jail, died by suicide after four days of isolation while battling COVID-19 symptoms. His request for mental health treatment was delayed, and staff forbade his nightly call to his mother to prevent illness spread. He pleaded in handwritten notes for a conversation, writing that his mother was worried about him. A guard collected the note and left, and within an hour he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself. His death was the first in a spike of suicides among ICE detainees that alarmed public health officials, with at least 10 suicides reported since January 2025, far exceeding detainee population growth.
"Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19. His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness. He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. "I feel in my heart that she's very worried about me," he wrote in Spanish."
"A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself. In this image provided by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Brayan Rayo Garzon looks toward a surveillance camera on April 7, 2025, shortly before he died by suicide."
"Rayo's April 2025 death was the first suicide in a spike among ICE detainees that has alarmed public health officials and jail experts. They said the unprecedented number of suicide deaths is an indication that authorities are failing to properly oversee the detention of tens of thousands of immigrants swept up in the Trump administration's aggressive deportation strategy. An Associated Press investigation found that at least 10 detainees, all men, have died by suicide since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, a pace that far exceeds the growth in the detainee population, according to a review of ICE data, autopsy reports, coroner's rulings, and police records."
"Since October, seven deaths have been classified as suicides, a number that is already the most for any fiscal year in the agency's history. ICE has usually recorded one or no such deaths annually. "Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective," said Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiol"
Read at ABC7 Los Angeles
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