ICE custody deaths hit record high as detention population surges

ICE custody deaths have climbed to a record 29 since October, surpassing the previous full-year high of 28 set in 2004 and forcing a sharper look at what has changed inside a detention system now holding about 60,000 people.

The latest death was 27-year-old Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, a Cuban man held in Miami, Florida. ICE said he was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of April 12 and listed the initial cause of death as a presumed suicide pending investigation. Carbonell-Betancourt had entered the United States in 2024 without valid documents, was later released under a parole program, then was arrested in 2025 for resisting an officer with violence before being transferred into ICE custody earlier this year.

The Trump administration has argued that the rise in deaths reflects the size of the detained population rather than a collapse in care. The Department of Homeland Security said on April 16 that the death rate in custody under Trump was 0.009 percent of the detained population. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Congress on April 17 that the agency now has the highest detention population in its history and said it spent almost half a billion dollars last fiscal year on care.

But the numbers on the ground keep rising faster than the explanations. Detentions are up more than 70 percent compared with the first year of the Biden administration, according to detention data cited in recent reporting, and KFF said ICE detention had grown to more than 68,000 people by February 7, up from 39,000 at the end of the Biden administration. KFF also reported 33 deaths in ICE custody in 2025, the highest since 2004, while a UCLA-backed dataset put the 2025 toll at 31 and said nearly 300 people have died in ICE custody since the agency was created in 2003.

Advocates and lawmakers have zeroed in on medical care and conditions in detention centers. Reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle found at least 48 deaths in ICE custody since January 20, 2025, and said at least 17 involved delayed or failed medical care that doctors said might have saved lives. Texas Public Radio reported that three of the people who died since October were held at Camp East Montana in El Paso, sharpening criticism of the private contractor operating that facility.

ICE says its facilities must provide comprehensive medical, dental and mental health care from the moment people arrive, report a death within 12 hours, and notify next of kin, Congress and the public. Under a 2021 policy and the 2018 DHS appropriations law, the agency is also supposed to post a public news release within two business days and full death reports within 90 days. Those records now sit at the center of the accountability question: whether a larger detention system alone explains the toll, or whether staffing, medical care and oversight have failed to keep pace.