'Too many cases': Mexico confronts US over deaths of its citizens in ICE custody

MEXICO CITY — As increasing numbers of migrants perish during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has vowed to ramp up pressure on U.S. authorities to investigate the deaths.

“There are too many cases,” Sheinbaum told reporters last week, referring to 17 Mexican citizens who have died while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody or during ICE operations. “Our obligation is to always defend Mexicans who are in the United States or whatever part of the world.”

The growing toll prompted Sheinbaum last month to direct Mexican diplomats to file complaints with state attorneys general and district attorneys across the United States, demanding that prosecutors investigate deaths that occurred in their jurisdictions.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the Mexicans who have died,” Sheinbaum said following the most recent fatal incident — the ICE shooting in Houston last month of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a construction contractor from Mexico who had lived in the United States for three decades.

Mexico’s new strategy represents an escalation from the country’s traditional policy of filing protests through diplomatic channels while assisting families with legal advice, paperwork and shipping remains back to Mexico.

However, to date, Mexico’s stepped-up efforts have yielded few results.

There is no public confirmation of prosecutions in any of the 17 cases, despite the entreaties of the Mexican government to the U.S. Department of Justice, eight attorneys general and 12 district attorney’s offices.

“The Americans don’t seem to be paying much attention,” said Víctor Clark, a long-time human rights advocate in Tijuana. “What Mexico is doing is basically a bureaucratic step with no real response.”

From a legal standpoint, Mexico faces an uphill battle. Mexican authorities use the word denuncias (complaints) for their actions, but Mexico cannot directly file complaints in U.S. courts in these cases. U.S. prosecutors have no mandate to respond to Mexican inquiries.

“The reality of the matter is that the Mexican government has very little standing to file complaints in the United States,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “A request for investigation from the Mexican government probably has a little more of an impact than a request from a random private citizen.”

At least 52 migrants — including 14 Mexican citizens — have died while in ICE custody since the beginning of the second Trump administration, according to a report in June from Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.

In addition, at least nine people have died during reported agency operations since 2025.

ICE says it thoroughly investigates all deaths of individuals in its custody or during agency actions. Critics charge that the Trump administration fails to pursue such cases adequately.

To date, Mexico has received partial or no responses to complaints sent to the eight states where the 17 deaths of Mexican citizens occurred, Roberto Velasco, Mexican’s foreign secretary, said last week.

Attorney generals in only four states — California, Texas, Florida and Illinois — even acknowledged receipt of Mexico’s demands, Velasco said.

The single definitive state reply came from Florida’s attorney general’s office, which concurred with ICE’s findings that the death of Royer Pérez Jiménez, 19, at the Glades County Detention Center was a “presumed suicide.”

According to Velasco, Ventura County was among only three of 12 local jurisdictions contacted — along with Cook County, Ill., and Harris Country, Texas — that said it was “evaluating” Mexico’s complaint.

But Joey Buttita, spokesperson for the Ventura County district attorney’s office, said the county had received no communication from Mexico.

Ventura was the site of one of ICE’s most sensational operations— the July 10, 2025, sweep at the Glass House Farms cannabis complex in Camarillo that resulted in hundreds of arrests as masked ICE agents descended on the facility.

One worker, Jaime Alanis García, 56, originally from Mexico’s Michoacán state, was fatally injured when he fell 30 feet from a greenhouse roof.

A flashpoint in the controversy is the private Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, where some 1,500 detainees are held. At least four Mexican citizens have died at the Adelanto facility, which is operated by the Geo Group, a Florida-based company.

Representatives of detainees at Adelanto have filed a civil class-action lawsuit alleging widespread abuse — including systemic medical neglect, inadequate food and water and mold contamination.

In July, a federal judge ordered ICE to institute sweeping changes at the Adelanto center, mandating improvements in the provision of water, food, sanitation and medical care.

Both ICE and Geo Group have denied any abuse at the facility.

“For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives,” according to a statement from Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency ,to The Times. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”

In March, after the fourth death of a Mexican national at Adelanto , the Mexican government vowed that it would “exhaust every legal and diplomatic avenue to bring attention to conditions” at U.S. detention centers.

Mexican diplomats in Los Angeles presented relatives of José Guadalupe Ramos Solano, 52, who, according to an ICE statement, was found “unconscious and unresponsive” on March 25 at Adelanto. He had lived for 28 years in the United States and worked at an industrial laundromat, said his widow, Antonia Tovar.

“My husband was a good person, dedicated to his kids and to his wife,” Tovar said. “I just want justice and to fight for the people who are there. I want my husband’s case to be the last one.”

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office has received three letters from the Mexican government about the deaths of at least two detainees at the Adelanto facility, said Jacquelyn Rodriguez, spokesperson for the district attorney’s office. But no criminal complaint has been filed.

—Times staff writers McDonnell and Vives reported respectively from Mexico City and Los Angeles. Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed.