Cuban detainee Denny Adan Gonzalez died at Stewart Detention Center, 18th ICE death of 2026

Denny Adan Gonzalez, a 33-year-old Cuban national, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, on the night of April 28, 2026. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, emergency staff at the facility responded with a cutdown tool and began CPR, and paramedics from neighboring Webster County continued resuscitation efforts before Gonzalez was pronounced dead at 11:11 p.m. ICE characterized the death as an apparent suicide and said the official cause remains under investigation. The facility is operated for ICE by the private prison company CoreCivic.

Gonzalez had a years-long immigration history: ICE said he entered the United States in 2019, was ordered removed and deported to Cuba that December, reentered in 2022, and was reporting to ICE in Charlotte until September 2025. He was detained at Stewart in January 2026 after a December arrest in Charlotte on domestic-violence allegations. His death was, by ICE's own count, the 18th in the agency's custody in 2026 — a pace that immigration researchers and reporting have described as the deadliest on record — amid a sharp expansion of the detained population to more than 60,000 people. It was the second apparent-suicide death at Stewart under the current administration, following a Mexican national's death in 2025; a third detainee died while being transferred to the facility.

The official account has not gone unchallenged. A former cellmate, Guillermo Aguilar, has publicly disputed ICE's suicide characterization, saying it was not possible for Gonzalez to have taken his own life in the cell where he was held. Advocacy groups, including Project South, renewed calls for Stewart's closure following the death.