Josselyn Yanez's mind went blank when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent called to tell her that her father had died at the hospital where he had been taken after falling ill at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California.

“I was devastated. It made me think thousands of things. “I ask myself questions, wondering if I could have done more,” says Jossely, who lives in Houston, Texas. Luis Beltran Yanez Cruz died at age 68 in a hospital in Indio, California. He had emigrated 26 years earlier from his hometown of Santa Rita Yoro in Honduras. He was the father of three children and grandfather of six grandchildren; and he earned a living painting houses.

“ICE arrested him on November 16th on the streets of Newark, New Jersey, where he lived. He was leaving McDonald's after breakfast at approximately 10:00 a.m. and stopped to chat with some farmworker friends when, unfortunately, ICE agents arrived and conducted a raid, taking five people, including my father.”

For Josselyn and her family, it was impossible to visit her father because a week later he was transferred from New Jersey to the Calexico Detention Center, just steps from the Mexican border.

“Four days after arriving in Calexico, he complained of nausea and stomach pains when he ate. A week later, he told me he was short of breath and had chest pains.”

Josselyn asked him if he had already requested to see a doctor.

“He told me that he had requested medical care.” They had to administer it via tablet, and it took about one or two weeks. A nurse only gave him pills to ease his stomach pain. They medicated him without knowing the source of the discomfort.”

They made him understand that if his health didn't improve, they would take him to the hospital.

The last time he spoke with his father was on Saturday, January 3rd, around 11 p.m.

“We didn't talk much because he had just gotten off work and was driving. He only told me, 'I love you very much. Take care!' My brother spoke with him,On Sunday, January 4, around four in the afternoon, he told her he was still feeling unwell.”

On Tuesday, January 6, Josselyn says she woke up thinking about her father. Hours later, at noon, a friend of her father's, who had been a fellow inmate at the Calexico Detention Center, called her.

“He found out from another detained friend that my father had been rushed to the hospital because he was walking around and started having trouble breathing.”

The conversation was interrupted when she received a phone call from a private number.

“When she answered, the person identified himself as an ICE agent. I asked her what had become of Mr. Luis Beltran Yanez Cruz, and I replied that his daughter was there.” It was then that he gave her the news she never wanted to receive. “I regret to inform you that your father has passed away.” He also told her that on Sunday, January 4th, he had been rushed to the hospital because he was showing symptoms of cardiac arrest. “But how? Why didn’t you notify me from the moment you took him out? ‘We didn’t have your contact information,’ you told me; but how did you find me now? ‘We looked in the call logs your father had made.’ And you couldn’t do that before to let me know he was very ill?” “There wasn’t enough time,” he replied.”

Luis died on Tuesday, January 6, at 1:18 a.m. ICE notified Josselyn and her family at noon, almost 12 hours later.

Two weeks after his death, she says she still hasn’t received the autopsy results.

“It’s going to take two to three weeks. All I know is that he apparently died of cardiac arrest at John F. Kennedy Hospital in Indio, but before that, they took him to the Regional Medical Center.”

Josselyn has no doubt that if her father had received timely medical attention at the ICE Detention Center in Calexico, he would be alive today.

“He didn’t have any illnesses. He started feeling sick a few days after arriving in Calexico, and he had been like that for weeks.

They ignored him.”

Frustrated and saddened, she urged ICE not to be so indifferent to the pain of detained immigrants.

“Those people they detain are human beings with families. Would you like your wives, husbands, children, or siblings to be treated like that? They have left us crying and grieving the loss of our father, whom we couldn't say a final goodbye to. It's not how we wanted him to leave this world.”

Are you going to file a lawsuit against ICE for your father's death?

“Right now, I'm focused on saying a final goodbye to my dad and giving him a hug. I always had hope that he would get out of that place.”

Josselyn and her family are waiting for the body of her father and grandfather in Houston to hold a wake and send it to Honduras.

“We want him to rest in peace in his homeland. He won't truly rest until justice is served, because I want justice, but at least he'll be in the place he would have wanted his remains to stay forever.”

Nathaly, an organizer from New Jersey, contacted TODEC Legal Center, a pro-immigrant organization in the Coachella Valley, to inform them of Luis's passing.

“We realized he was from another state, and that he died alone at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio. It's another death, and it breaks our hearts,” says Luz Gallegos, director of TODEC Legal Center.

With her voice breaking with emotion, on the verge of tears, she says they hope for justice for Luis, and all those who have died in ICE custody.

“We want justice for the deaths, the separations, and all the pain and trauma they are causing in our community. There are already too many workers from the land we lost when we were arrested. Many have already been deported, others are being held.”

On January 16, the pro-immigrant organization TODEC Legal Center held a mass at Our Lady of Soledad Catholic Church in Coachella, California to honor Luis's memory.

His daughter, Josselyn, attended the mass virtually.

This Honduran father and grandfather is not the only one who has died in ICE custody in Calexico.

On September 29, an immigrant from China, Huabing Xie, died at the Regional Medical Center after being transferred from the same Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico where Luis Beltran was held.

While in custody, Xie experienced a seizure and lost consciousness; he died in the hospital.

If you would like to support Luis Beltran's family with donations, please visit the Luis Beltran Yanez Cruz page on GoFundMe.

At least six people have already died in ICE custody this year.

Luis's case is the first in California this year, 2026. Last year, at the Adelanto Detention Center, which houses nearly 2,000 immigrants, on September 22, 2025, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a 39-year-old DACA recipient, died at Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, California. His family reported that Ayala-Uribe,who had lived in the United States since the age of four, had complained of fever and a persistent cough in the weeks leading up to his death. A month later, on October 23, 2025, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, died after being detained in Adelanto for only a week. Both deaths remain under investigation. Pastor Guillermo Torres, director of the migration program at Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), who has visited the ICE Detention Center in Adelanto since 2011, says that in the specific case of this center, the deaths have always been linked to medical negligence.

“The lack of medical care is something that continues to fail and will continue to cause deaths in Adelanto and other centers. The guards are indifferent and dismiss the immigrants' complaints; they don't believe them or they ignore them.”

She witnessed the case of a 20-year-old woman of Arab origin who suffered from a urinary tract infection for four months.

“She almost died because they kept her on Tylenol instead of giving her the antibiotics that would have quickly resolved her health problem; another immigrant complained of a toothache for weeks, and they didn't pay attention to him until his face swelled up.”

Pastor Torres says he is very concerned about what is happening in the detention centers because they are more crowded than ever, and immigrants are exposed to medical neglect and psychological abuse.

“Recently, the wife of an immigrant from Turkey called me because her husband was so depressed that he wanted to take his own life in Adelanto. So, between the lack of healthcare and the horrors they are subjected to, it doesn't surprise me that there may be more deaths from medical neglect or suicides.”

The 31 deaths of immigrants in ICE custody in California in 2025 do not include Jaime Alanis Garcia, who died while trying to flee from agents during a raid in a marijuana ranch in Camarillo on July 10.

Nor the 53-year-old Guatemalan grandfather, Roberto Carlos Montoya, who worked as a day laborer and died while fleeing an ICE raid at a Home Depot store in Monrovia, California in August. He was struck by a vehicle on Highway 210, and witnesses indicated he was trying to evade agents.

A January 2026 letter signed by 12 members of Congress revealed that 17 immigrant deaths occurred in Border Patrol custody during the first twelve months of the Trump administration.