Deaths in ICE custody hit record high under Trump admin, agency says
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, USA TODAY’s tracker shows at least 48 people have died in ICE detention facilities.
Eduardo CuevasA record number of people have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention during the current Trump administration, the agency’s acting director said April 16.
Since President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January 2025, USA TODAY’s tracker shows at least 48 people have died in ICE detention facilities. Todd Lyons, who leads ICE, told federal lawmakers at least 44 people have died in custody since he began his acting tenure in March 2025. Overall, numbers are higher since Trump returned to the White House promising to dramatically increase deportations from the United States.
“It is the highest because we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003,” Lyons told Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Illinois.
Underwood, who questioned Lyons' numbers, grilled him on practices by ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agencies in a House budget hearing. DHS has remained partially unfunded since mid-February over lawmakers objecting to immigration agents' tactics that have resulted in Americans killed during federal operations. Conditions in immigrant detention facilities have also drawn heavy scrutiny since the start of Trump's second term.
Neither Congress nor the public, Underwood said, has had a real explanation why more people are dying in ICE custody.
“Just saying simply there’s more detainees, I mean, you have more officers, you have more resources,” she said. “That’s not, in my opinion, a valid rationale why the death rate would be increasing.”
Underwood said ICE appeared on track to break the number of detainee deaths in 2025; USA TODAY tallied 32 people who died in custody the previous year. In 2026, there have been 16 deaths, including an April 13 death.
Underwood questioned whether there were changes to internal policies or goals to reduce deaths in custody. Lyons responded there is no policy to try to reduce deaths.
NBC News reported ICE has limited disclosures on circumstances of detainees’ deaths. Agency policy had been to notify public and Congress within two days of a death, but the policy appears to have changed since mid-December. ICE’s online postings about investigations on deaths has also been delayed.
Due to the partial DHS shutdown, the department reportedly said nonessential reporting functions have slowed. On April 16, Lyons told lawmakers there was no legal basis that investigating deaths was “nonessential.”
The same day, a newly published JAMA study showed increasing rates of deaths in ICE custody. The latest fiscal year surpassed death rates from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the April 16 study, which collected data from fiscal year 2004 through Jan. 19, 2026. The 2026 fiscal year, from Oct. 1, 2025, to Jan. 19, had the highest death rate in the 22-year study period.
Recent increases in deaths were more indicative of “systemic weaknesses” in medical care, mental health protection and mortality review rather than isolated instances, researchers unaffiliated with the study wrote in an opinion editorial.
ICE is requesting $5.4 billion from Congress in the 2027 fiscal year for Enforcement and Removal Operations, including to fund 41,500 detention beds and to expand detention facilities, according to Lyons' written statement. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said there were more than 60,300 people in ICE detention as of April 4.
Suhail Bhat of USA TODAY contributed to this story.
Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at [email protected] or on Signal at emcuevas.01.