‘Is he breathing?’ Suicide confirmed at overcrowded Georgia ICE facility

Immigration authorities reported Molina-Veya’s death in June. Earlier this month, they released the findings of an investigation into his time in custody leading up to his passing.

ICE confirmed that, unlike the immigrant detainee in Missouri who also died by suicide in 2025, Molina-Veya did receive a mental health screening in May, shortly after his arrival to Stewart. Previously, he had “denied suicide ideation, substance abuse, and mental health problems,” the ICE report states.

Less than a month after the mental health screening, staff found Molina-Veya “unresponsive with a cloth ligature around his neck tied to the bottom rail of the top bunk,” according to the ICE report.

Approximately three minutes passed between the time a medical emergency was declared and a staff member called 911.

“We got a hanging (undiscernible)” the staff member told the 911 dispatcher, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“A man hanging?” the dispatcher answered. “You got a male attempted suicide. Is he breathing?”

“Negative,” the caller replied.

Records obtained by the AJC show it took emergency responders roughly nine minutes to arrive. By then, Stewart personnel had cut the material wrapped around Molina-Veya’s neck and lowered him to the floor, where they administered CPR, according to the ICE report.

EMS personnel transferred Molina-Veya to Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus. Medical staff there pronounced him dead.

News of Molina-Veya’s death in ICE custody reached Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. She stated at a news conference that her government had requested more information about the conditions Molina-Veya was in at the time of his death.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

“We’re always going to look for the respect of the human rights of Mexicans abroad,” Sheinbaum said.

According to ICE, Molina-Veya entered the country without authorization on numerous occasions, starting in 1999. He was removed several times, with the most recent removal occurring in 2007.

During his time in the U.S., Molina-Veya faced numerous arrests and convictions, including for child molestation, a hit and run and possession of controlled substances, ICE said. His most recent arrest took place on Feb. 28 “for probation violation and other offenses,” the agency said.

Before Molina-Veya’s passing, there had been two confirmed deaths by suicide (Efrain Romero De La Rosa and Jean Carlos Jimenez-Joseph) at Stewart since ICE began detaining immigrants there in 2006.

Nationwide, detainee deaths are surging as detention facilities become increasingly overwhelmed, in part the result of ICE’s goal of arresting about 3,000 people per day. As of mid-June, ICE was detaining nearly 60,000 people, roughly 45% above the number of beds Congress last allocated for the agency.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Amilcar Valencia, director of El Refugio, a Stewart County nonprofit that works to support immigrant detainees and their loved ones, said the organization “stands united in our refusal to accept any more senseless deaths in detention and (in) our call to shut down Stewart.”

“We mourn the tragic death of Jesus Molina-Veya and extend our heartfelt sympathies to his family,” Valencia said. “Our hearts are with the people detained at (Stewart), for whom another death is a stark reminder of the cruelty of a system that fails to provide basic care.”

President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law earlier this month, will make ICE by far the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. Included in the bill are $45 billion to expand the immigration detention system over the next four years.

That influx of resources could allow ICE to hold more than 100,000 detainees at any given time, cost estimates show.