Deaths in ICE custody hit 22-year high under Trump, study finds

The death toll in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has climbed to a 22-year high, exposing a widening oversight gap as detention has expanded and medical safeguards have come under fresh scrutiny. A JAMA analysis of ICE custody deaths from fiscal year 2004 through Jan. 19, 2026, found 272 deaths overall and an annual mortality rate of 88.9 deaths per 100,000 person-years in partial fiscal year 2026.

That spike came as the number of people held in immigration detention surged past 68,000 in February 2026, according to UCLA’s Behind Bars Data Project. The same data project said 31 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest total since 2004, underscoring how the risks have intensified even after years of earlier decline. NBC News reported that 14 people had died in ICE custody by March 30 or 31, 2026, and later reporting said ICE had logged its 16th detainee death of the year, while 11 people died in custody during all of 2024.

The human cost has been visible in individual cases. ICE said Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old from Nicaragua, died Jan. 14 at Camp East Montana in El Paso, and that Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, a 34-year-old Mexican national, died the same day at the Robert A. Deyton Detention Center in Georgia. Those deaths came as facilities across the system faced renewed questions about whether detainees were receiving timely medical attention and whether serious illnesses or emergencies were being caught early enough.

ICE says it issued a detainee-death reporting policy in 2021 that covers notification, review and reporting requirements, and that those reviews are sent to senior management and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. But the rising death toll suggests those internal checks have not been enough to prevent repeated fatalities, even as the agency expands detention and critics warn that care standards are not keeping pace.

In Congress, Rep. Dave Min and Rep. Judy Chu led 43 House members in a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons demanding answers about the record number of deaths. The lawmakers warned that the deaths raise questions about ICE’s ability to comply with detention standards, medical care protocols and notification requirements. For advocates, physicians and researchers pressing for stronger transparency, the pattern points to a basic public health failure: a detention system holding more people while leaving too little visibility into the conditions that are killing them.