US immigration custody death rate at decade high: Rights groups

NEW YORK - The rate of people dying in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has reached its highest level in over a decade amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, rights groups said on June 25.

At least 52 deaths have been reported in ICE holding facilities since Trump’s second term began in January 2025, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.

Trump has made combating illegal immigration a top priority of his second term, with authorities rounding up thousands of people and expanding detention centres.

From January 2025 to January 2026, the annual mortality rate in ICE custody was up 140 per cent compared to a year earlier – an increase disproportionate to the higher detainee population, the report said.

The death rate is nearly four times that seen under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, and over two times higher than during the Republican’s first term from 2017 to 2021.

“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.”

One case highlighted in the report was a 44-year-old man from Ukraine who suffered a stroke in detention and was not given suitable medical care despite having clear signs of an emergency, including seizure-like movements.

Another instance was of 39-year-old Mexican man, who reportedly died from cardiac arrest that likely arose from septic shock after his requests for medical help on an infected abscess were mishandled.

ICE has faced criticism for its hardline tactics, and in 2026 underwent a leadership shuffle after agents in Minneapolis shot dead two US citizens.

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 per cent of the detained population,” the spokesperson said.

“As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained higher a standard of care than most prisons that hold US citizens – including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

But June 25’s report found that, as immigration detention centres have grown, medical care has been lagging, partly due to crowding and people spending longer in custody.

Katherine Peeler, an assistant professor of paediatrics at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the report, said the US government is “failing on all counts” to protect ICE detainees.

“In the cases where we do have access to ICE and outside hospital records, we are seeing a breathtaking abdication of duty of care,” Peeler, an advisor at Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement.

The report also highlighted a high number of people dying by suicide in ICE custody, with seven such deaths from January 2025 to January 2026, compared to one in 2024.

Human Rights Watch analysed trends in ICE custody death rates from October 2015 to June 2026, and compared it with existing research on deaths going back to 2004, the year after ICE was established.

The New York-based group also interviewed family members, attorneys and former cellmates of the deceased.

Physicians for Human Rights assessed the clinical circumstances preceding 39 deaths recorded from January 2025 to January 2026 and the adequacy of care. AFP