Reps. Dave Min, D-Irvine, and Judy Chu, D-Pasadena spearheaded a congressional letter sent Friday to Homeland Security officials demanding information about how the agency has cared for immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, including a Costa Mesa man who died last month.

The letter, which was signed by 43 other congressional representatives, including other Southern California representatives Robert Garcia, Maxine Waters, Lou Correa and Mike Levin, detailed the deaths of 56-year-old Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, who died Oct. 23, while detained at the agency’s processing center in Adelanto.

“His death comes one month after the death of Mr. Ismael Ayala-Uribe on Sept. 22, 2025, also at Adelanto, who was reportedly denied medical treatment,” the letter reads. “These deaths raise serious questions about ICE’s ability to compy with basic detention standards, medical care protocols, and notification requirements, and underscore a pattern of gross negligence that demands immediate accountability.”

ICE officials issued a statement on Nov. 3 alleging that Garcia-Aviles, who was in the country illegally from Mexico, died at Victory Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville. The agency said Garcia-Aviles, who was arrested Oct. 15, “did not spend the night at Adelanto because that same day Garcia exhibited suspected alcohol withdrawal symptoms and was therefore immediately admitted” to the hospital.

ICE officials said his family requested that “medical staff discontinue resuscitation efforts” about 7:45 p.m. Oct. 23. Hospital officials “attributed the death to cardiac arrest due to alcohol withdrawals,” ICE alleged.

The agency claimed Garcia-Aviles said he told “medical staff that he consumed approximately two pints of liquor daily.”

The agency also claimed that Garcia-Aviles had made multiple illegal entries into the country in 2007 and 2008 and that Costa Mesa police had arrested him “multiple times between 2021 and 2025” on suspicion of disorderly conduct and false identification to police.

The congressional representatives argue in the letter that ICE “appears to have repeatedly failed to comply with internal standards, and these failures have contributed to deaths in custody.”

The representatives contend in the letter that for the past decade the agency has “delayed or provided substandard medical care, neglected to provide proper medication, and falsified medical records… ICE’s failure to adhere to basic standards of care for individuals in its custody is inexcusable.”

The representatives said Garcia-Aviles had “resided in the U.S. for over 30 years,” and that his family was informed of his condition “when he was on his deathbed.” The representatives said his daughter found him “unconscious, intubated, and” he had “dried blood on his forehead.”

The letter also recounts the deaths of other detainees in Florida and Texas.

The representatives demanded more information on medical care for detainees and what steps were being taken to improve it.

“ICE has publicly reported 25 detainee deaths since Jan. 23, 2025 and has issued 15 Detainee Death Reports in accordance with congressional reporting requirements,” the letter reads. “To put that figure into perspective, ICE has recorded almost 64% as many in-custody deaths in just the first nine months of President Trump’s second term as occurred during his entire first term, when 36 detainees died in custody.

“Further, the number of deaths this year exceeds every year on record since reporting began in 2018, including Fiscal Year 2020, when deaths spiked in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”