How understaffing and DHS policy drives rising deaths in ICE detention centers | CNN

Jose Guadalupe Ramos’ cellmates inside a remote Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Southern California could see that he desperately needed help. Ramos, who was struggling to breathe, turned purple and his eyes rolled back in his head, recalled Marco Martinez, who said he slept in the bunk next to Ramos. But as Ramos’s fellow detainees screamed for help, it took 10 minutes for medical staffers to respond, Martinez said. When they did arrive, nurses struggled with a malfunctioning oxygen tank as they tried and failed to revive Ramos, he said. The 52-year-old, who had lived in the US for nearly three decades, was covered with a blanket and carried out on a stretcher, Martinez said of the March 25 incident. He was soon pronounced dead. “I don’t want to accept it,” said his widow, Antonia Tovar, who lives with their two children in the same Los Angeles-area house where she and Ramos were married 29 years ago. “I still feel like one day he’s going to come back.” Ramos is one of nearly 50 ICE detainees who has died since President Donald Trump returned to office last year and began pushing for mass deportations. More died in custody in 2025 than in an