ICE: Immigration detainee's death appears to be suicide

CUTHBERT, Ga. (AP) - Authorities say a Mexican man held at a south Georgia immigration detention center has died in an apparent suicide.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a news release Thursday that 40-year-old Efrain De La Rosa was pronounced dead around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.

ICE says staff at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin found De La Rosa unresponsive in his cell. He died at a hospital in Cuthbert after efforts to revive him failed.

ICE says the case is under investigation but the "preliminary cause of death appears to be self-inflicted strangulation."

De La Rosa was handed over to ICE on March 11 by law enforcement in Wake County, North Carolina, after a March 9 felony conviction for larceny. He was in deportation proceedings at the time of his death.