The rate of people dying in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has reached its highest level in over a decade, two rights groups said on Thursday.
According to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, at least 52 deaths have been reported in ICE holding facilities since US President Donald Trump's second term began in January 2025.
Trump has made combating illegal immigration a top priority of his second term.
“We have seen the death rate in ICE custody skyrocket,” Reagan Williams, a HRW researcher who co-authored the report, told AFP.
“Instead of taking action to address this crisis and protect the lives and health of those in custody, we’ve seen the administration pour its resources into subjecting more and more people to prolonged detention,” she said.
From January 2025 to January 2026, the annual mortality rate in ICE custody was up 140% compared with a year earlier – an increase disproportionate to the higher detainee population, the report said.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, denied the reported spike in deaths.
“Consistent with data over the last decade, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population,” he said.
But June 25’s report found that, as immigration detention centers have grown, medical care has been lagging, partly due to crowding and people spending longer in custody.
“As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold US citizens – including providing access to proper medical care,” the spokesperson said. "For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives,” he added.
