According to the agency, Sandoval was kidnapped by agents on October 2 and arrived at the former jail-turned-concentration camp on October 8, 2026. Fifteen days later, ICE officials claim they found him with a ligature around his neck. They wrote in a statement that staff found Sandoval at around 1:46 a.m. and that he was pronounced dead by Charlton County Emergency Medical Services roughly 42 minutes later, at 2:28 a.m.

For the last 20 days, several detainees at the facility run by The GEO Group, which operated as a prison for decades, have been on a hunger strike to protest their conditions and continued imprisonment. It is unclear as of this writing if Sandoval was participating in the hunger strike.

In a courageous video issued earlier this month, the hunger strikers, who include fathers and husbands of US citizens, asylum seekers and immigrants who have committed no crimes, detailed conditions at the for-profit facility and efforts by the Trump administration to subvert their democratic rights. Mujtaba Qeyami, an asylum seeker imprisoned at the facility for 20 months, said most of the people in the former jail came to the United States “seeking protection from political persecution and violence in their home countries,” only to find themselves incarcerated in the United States.

Idris Makhmudov, one of the leaders of the hunger strike, said he had been imprisoned at the facility for over 27 months. After launching the hunger strike, Makhmudov was promptly deported to Russia. In an interview with NPR before he was deported, Makhmudov said that “prisons can be better because you know when you’ll be out. In here, what kills you more every day, that you don’t know when all this [is] going to be changed.”

In a statement released on October 26, Asian Americans Advancing Justice claimed 500 people were participating in the hunger strike at the start of the month, and at least 12 people were still protesting their conditions by refusing food. The statement noted that those participating in the strike “have faced solitary confinement and are now being threatened with force feeding, both widely considered torture.”