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The Otay Mesa ICE detainee death disclosed on Oct. 27 is at least the third death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in eight days, and it happened at a detention center where San Diego County has already had to go to court to get its health inspectors inside. Roberto Jimenez Gutierrez, 43, a Guatemalan national, was found unresponsive in his living area at the Otay Mesa Detention Center at about 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 24 and was pronounced dead before he could be taken from the facility, according to ICE and CoreCivic, the company that runs the center, as reported by KPBS and CBS 8. The cause of death is not yet known. The San Diego County medical examiner performed an autopsy on Oct. 26.
ICE said Jimenez Gutierrez had a prior deportation order and was arrested on Oct. 9 in Escondido during an enforcement stop, KPBS reported. He had been in custody about two weeks. His death came one week after a green card holder died at ICE’s Laredo processing center on Oct. 17, and one day after Luis Sandoval died at the Folkston, Georgia, detention center.
No official running count exists for this year. NBC 7 San Diego counted Jimenez Gutierrez as at least the 29th person to die in ICE custody in 2026, and Telemundo put the figure at 30. Those tallies are built from ICE’s individual death announcements. As of Oct. 28, the agency’s public Detainee Death Reporting page lists no death after Aug. 31, 2025.
Who owns the building matters here. DHS bought the Otay Mesa property from CoreCivic in July for about $739 million, using detention money from the 2025 budget law, and kept CoreCivic on as operator under a contract that runs at least through 2029, Times of San Diego reported. NBC 7 also reported the federal purchase. That makes Otay Mesa a federally owned, privately run site, and it puts the county’s oversight fight on a different footing from the Georgia and Texas cases.
That fight predates this death. County public health officials were first turned away and got in only after a federal judge allowed an inspection, CBS 8 reported. Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said the June inspection found tuberculosis cases the county had not been told about, no vaccines in stock and a man who had waited 18 months for a medical device. On Oct. 27, Aguirre and Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer asked ICE and CoreCivic to preserve medical records and video, give a timeline of the man’s care and explain what has been fixed since June, with a written response requested by Nov. 10. CoreCivic said it was “deeply saddened by the loss of anyone in our care.”
Federal ownership is likely to make that leverage harder to use. Under long-standing constitutional doctrine, states and counties generally cannot regulate federal property or federal operations without Congress’s consent, so county health rules that reach a private jail may not reach a federal one in the same way. The practical effect is that the county’s access is likely to keep running through court orders and public pressure, while the records that would explain this death arrive on their own schedules.
Two deadlines are now set. The supervisors’ Nov. 10 response date comes first. ICE’s own rules call for a public report on an in-custody death within 90 days, a requirement Congress set in 2018 appropriations language; for a death on Oct. 24, that points to about Jan. 22, 2027. The medical examiner’s finding on cause and manner of death could come sooner and will shape how both are read. For background on detention conditions and who gets a hearing, see the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on bond hearings and the Indiana case of a man claiming U.S. birth who remains in ICE detention.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: KPBS: Man who died in ICE custody at Otay Mesa Detention Center ID’d, Oct. 27, 2026; CBS 8 (KFMB): San Diego officials demand answers from ICE, CoreCivic after detainee’s death at Otay Mesa, Oct. 27, 2026; NBC 7 San Diego: ICE detainee identified after death at Otay Mesa Detention Center, Oct. 27, 2026; Telemundo: La muerte de un guatemalteco en California eleva a 30 los fallecidos bajo custodia de ICE este año, Oct. 2026; Times of San Diego: Gobierno federal compra centro de detención de Otay Mesa, July 20, 2026; ICE: Detainee Death Reporting (reporting rules and listed deaths, checked Oct. 28, 2026).
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