Gustavo Rivero Napoles spent nearly six months in immigration detention before he died of cancer in a California hospital intensive care unit. The 65-year-old Hialeah man, who had been diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer before he was ever taken into custody, was released from ICE custody on the same day he was transferred to the ICU — about 48 hours before he died.
According to the Miami Herald, Rivero Napoles was hospitalized beginning October 20 and moved to an intensive care unit in California on October 23, the same day ICE released him. His sister-in-law, Carolina Rivero, did not mince words about what she believes happened. “They just waited for him to die,” she said, according to the Herald's reporting.
The family said ICE did not tell them Rivero Napoles had been hospitalized and that agents declined nurses’ requests for the family’s contact information. A doctor called Catalina Rivero on October 24, the family said. She and her husband drove five hours to the hospital and found him unresponsive.
A Life That Began With Immigration From Cuba
Rivero Napoles arrived in the United States from Cuba around 1970, at age 8, and lived most of his life in Hialeah, where he worked as a welder and raised two daughters. The Herald reported that he had bipolar affective disorder, anxiety and depression, and used a wheelchair because liver disease caused painful swelling in his legs.
The Herald reported that Rivero Napoles was arrested in 2023 in connection with a 1984 rape case, but prosecutors declined to pursue sexual battery charges. He took a plea deal resulting in a battery charge, two years of house arrest and probation. Earlier this year, after he failed a random drug test, he was jailed and then held at an immigration check-in center in Miramar, Krome North Service Processing Center and California City Processing Center.
Family Fought for Months to Get Him Released
Relatives sought Rivero Napoles’s release for months. His sister, Catalina Rivero, filed a lawsuit in September challenging his detention and seeking his release. The Herald reported that he told her by phone from detention that he did not want to die there. A judge ordered an attorney appointed for him on October 26, the day after his death.
The family said two ICE agents watched Rivero Napoles at all times during his initial hospitalization.
The family believes better medical treatment might have prolonged Rivero Napoles’s life or allowed doctors to evaluate him for a liver transplant. His niece, Angelina Rivero, described his final days this way: “He died being treated like a dog.”
A Broader Pattern of Late Releases and Reporting Changes
Rivero Napoles's case fits a pattern that has drawn scrutiny from immigration attorneys and civil rights groups. Former ICE official Deborah Fleischaker said the agency may release very sick detainees when they are near death in order to avoid recording a death in custody, though she noted the number of similar cases is not known. ICE reversed standards in June that had required public reporting and reviews of deaths within 30 days of release, according to Fleischaker, who said the earlier policy was intended in part to deter releasing sick or dying people to avoid accountability. The U.S. government did not report Rivero Napoles's death.
Two other people died within days of being released from ICE custody in 2026, and separate cases drew homicide rulings from authorities: a Haitian asylum seeker died of hypothermia outside Pittsburgh, and a Rohingya asylum seeker died in part of hypothermia after being left in a New York parking lot. The Miami Herald's broader investigation found that two men, including Rivero Napoles, received inadequate or delayed medical treatment while in ICE custody. The Herald contacted ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for comment but had not received a response by publication time.
Deaths in Detention Have Climbed Nationwide
More than 30 people died in immigration custody in 2025 and at least 29 more in 2026, with deaths rising significantly since the mass deportation campaign that began in 2025. Figures on the overall death toll during the second Trump administration vary by source and methodology: The Intercept has put the number at least at 56, the ACLU has cited at least 57, and Human Rights Watch recorded 52 deaths between January 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026.
Human Rights Watch also found that the mortality rate for deaths in ICE custody reached its highest level in more than a decade, more than doubling since the start of the administration's second term.
On October 24, Guillermo Pascual Verganza, a 43-year-old man from Guatemala who was transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego on October 9, died at the facility, according to inewsource. Internal ICE reviews obtained separately found that detention staff broke with safe standards of medical care for at least six detainees who died in custody in 2025, including Haitian detainee Marie Ange Blaise, whose April 2025 death from a heart attack at the Broward Transitional Center a mortality review committee determined was not handled within safe limits of practice, according to Reason.
Pattern of Flagged Failures in Internal Reviews
ICE’s Health Services Corps conducts a mortality review after each in-custody death to assess whether appropriate care was provided, according to The Intercept’s reporting. Internal reviews have described recurring failures including ignored sick calls, interrupted medications and CPR that was inadequate or performed incorrectly, according to Reason’s review of the documents.
What ICE’s Internal Reviews Found
Reason found that, among 33 deaths in ICE detention centers reviewed between September 2019 and January 2026, 31 reviews reached a conclusion; 27 of those found care was not provided within safe-practice limits or deviated beyond them.
ICE's own detainee death reporting page states that congressional requirements under the DHS Appropriations Acts of 2018 and 2019 obligate the agency to make in-custody death reports public within 90 days.
