The third known death in slightly over five months at the Adelanto Detention Center, operated for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customes Enforcement by the GEO Group, occurred on February 27
The recent spate of deaths there, taking place during the stepped-up deportation effort initiated by the Donald Trump Administration last year, closely approaches a match with what occurred at the facility in 2017, the first year of President Trump’s first term.
The most recent death was that of Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, who died at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in the city of Victorville at 12:58 a.m., less than hour after midnight on Friday, February 27. He had been transported there the previous day from the Adelanto Detention Center after collapsing and losing consciousness. hours earlier in the hospital where he was transferred after losing consciousness at the Adelanto Detention Center.
“My husband died due to medical negligence. For days he was asking for help and they never paid any attention to him,” said Martinez, her voice breaking.
Gutiérrez, born in Veracruz, Mexico, emigrated to the United States in 2001, and had never registered with the U.S. government as a tourist or alien employed in the country. He had no visa, no work permit nor a green card. He had lived primarily in the Los Angeles area, working under the table and undetected by authorities in the construction industry.
Gutiérrez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on January 9, 2025 in the Echo Park District of Central Los Angeles in what was a predominantly Latino neighborhood.
Gutiérrez, 48, was with his wife, Patricia Martinez, going to a restaurant for breakfast that Friday morning when the couple was spotted by a roving team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at 10:44 a.m. When the uniformed agents passed near him, Gutiérrez bolted. The agents gave chase and arrested him, taking him to the ground as they did so, injuring his arm, knee and banging his head on the concrete.
Gutiérrez’s wife, Patricia Martinez, who is originally from Nayarit and has a residency permit, was not arrested.
After being taken into custody, Gutiérrez was held in a holding cell known as B17 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility within the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles. There, while sleepingon the floor in a cold room with laminated paper sheets as bedding, Gutiérrez developed a cough that persisted. Two days after his arrest, Gutiérrez was transferred to the Adelanto Detention Center.
The Adelanto Detention Center, also known as the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, is operated by the GEO Group, a private, for-profit prison corporation, operates in California. The GEO Group manages the facility under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is the fifth largest immigration detention centers in the United States, with a high daily population, frequently exceeding 1,800 detainees. The comparable facilities throughout the country that exceed its capacity are the ERO El Paso Camp East Montana facility in Texas, which averages approximately 2,954 inmates per day; The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas that has the capacity to hold up to 2,400 people, generally in family units; the Adams County Detention Center in Nathez, Mississippi, a facility operated by CoreCivic, with an average daily population of over 2,100 and sometimes exceeding 2,200; and the Steward Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia , which is also run by CoreCivic and frequently holds over 2,000 detainees.
On Wednesday, February 18 Gutiérrez, who had not shaken off the cough he had been nursing since January, grew more acutely ill after being taken out into the prison’s yard for exercise, despite inclement weather, including severe cold and rain. Upon returning to his cell, Gutiérrez was coughing violently and feverish, but was not so incapacitated that he could not obtain paperwork to be admitted to a medical facility, which he filled out, at least partially. GEO did not respond in a timely manner. Gutiérrez languished in his cell, periodically asking to be given medical attention.
On Tuesday, February 24, still ill, Gutiérrez appeared in court for a bail hearing. Bail was not granted.
Records are not clear. Between Wednesday, February 25, and Friday, February 27, Gutiérrez was sent to the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville. It was there that he expired on February 27, 2026. The Mexican Consulate in San Bernardino was notified of his death via email at around 3 a.m. that morning.
Martinez and their son, Erick, who was born in Los Angeles, were notified of Gutiérrez’s death just before 8 a.m. that morning.
Gutiérrez’s death was preceded less than six months ago by the death of Ismael Ayala-Uribe on September 25, 2025, who was foreign-born and lived in Westminster, eventually becoming documented when he applied for Deferred Action For child Arrivals benefits. Ayala-Uribe died in custody shortly after being returned to the Adelanto facility from the Victor Valley Global Medical Center, where he had been evaluated for an abscess.
The following month, on October 23, 2025, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, a resident of Orange County, died while in the custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. He was in custody after being arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.
The Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not begin to keep and publicly provide statistics with regard to deaths in its facilities until 2019. Nevertheless, the Sentinel, through its archives has at least a partial window on the recurrences of deaths at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center going back to prior to that.
On March 28, 2017, Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba, 33, a Nicaraguan national, died while in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center. The State of California’s Certificate of Death, issued June 1, 2017, documented the cause of Gonzalez’s death as hypoxic encephalopathy, a brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation to the brain, and hanging. He had committed suicide.
Sergio Alonso Lopez, 55, died on April 13, 2017 while being hospitalized after suffering extensive internal bleeding. Lopez was in the process of being expelled from the country for the fourth time, haing been deported three times between 1994 and 2017.
Vicente Caceres-Maradiaga died on May 31, 2017, at the age of 44. He was a Honduran immigrant who collapsed while playing soccer at the Adelanto Detention Center and was pronounced dead while being transported to a hospital.
There have been other deaths of inmates at the Adelanto ICE Center.
In May 2014, Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos, 44, an El Salvadoran who had been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at two other ICE facilities in California since 2010 while he was fighting extradition to El Salvador was sent to the Adelanto Detention Center for unregistered migrants. On April 3, 2015, after experiencing what prison officials called “unusual bleeding,” Morales-Ramos was transferred to a hospital in Palmdale. At the hospital, it was determined that Morales Ramos had intestinal cancer that had long gone untreated. He died in the hospital on April 6, 2015. An inquiry later determined that substandard medical care contributed to his death.
A federal investigation into Adelanto’s first death concluded that the death of Fernando Dominguez could have been prevented. CIVIC and Human Rights Watch recently analyzed the medical records of Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos, a man who died in 2015 at Adelanto, concluding that subpar medical care contributed to his death.
In 2012, Renando Dominguez, a Mexican immigrant who was incarcerated for being in the country illegally and was awaiting deprtation proceedings, died of pneumonia. An follow-up investigation into the circumstances surrounding Dominguez’s demise concluded he had “received an unacceptable level of medical care” at the facility, and that his death was avoidable.
There have long been questions as to whether the Adelanto facility complies with basic standards applied to detention facilities of any type. There have been suggestions both ICE and GEO have allowed diminished standards, medical care protocols and communication with regard to the health and safety of inmates in Adelanto to slip because the inmates are not American citizens. GEO has been accused of a pattern of gross negligence with regard to prisoners that has taken place because the corporation was seeking to maximize its profits in the operation of the facility.
Under both major American political parties, neglect of international prisoners has been neglected.
In 2014, under the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama, an Inspector Generals report concluded that medical care at the Adelanto Detention Center met acceptable standards expected from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A letter sent last November to the  Department of Homeland Security and its Secretary, Kristi Noem, decrying the deaths of 25 people who had died in U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to that point in 2025 which demanded an explanation of what was happening and what remedies were being pursued was signed by 43 members of Congress, virtually all of whom were Democrats.
Criticism of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its facilities is made, it appears, only by the party that is not in control of the executive branch and thus not in a position to take action impacting the situation. Conversely, members of the party in control of the federal government’s executive branch come across as reflexively satisfied with how the prisons holding international prisoners are run.attered rcost millions of dollars.”