How many people have died in ICE and Border Patrol custody each year since 2015?
Executive summary
ICE’s official and media tallies show a sharp rise in in‑custody deaths in 2025 — at least 30 and by some counts 32 — making it the agency’s deadliest year in roughly two decades (ICE/media reporting) [1] [2] [3] [4]. Available sources do not provide a complete, consistently sourced year‑by‑year table from 2015 through 2025 for both ICE and U.S. Border Patrol (CBP), so any precise annual series must be drawn from agency death reports and cross‑checked media/advocacy lists [5] [6].
1. What the best available reporting shows for 2025 — an unprecedented spike
Multiple major outlets and advocacy groups report that 2025 saw the largest number of deaths in ICE custody in about 20 years, with agency figures and aggregated media tallies putting the total at least at 30 and in other tallies at 32 people who died while detained by ICE in 2025 (Reuters, People, The Guardian, ACLU summaries) [1] [2] [3] [4] [7]. Reuters explicitly states “at least 30 people died in ICE custody in 2025” and other outlets and advocacy organisations cite 32 deaths as the year’s total [1] [2] [3] [4].
2. What reporting and oversight rules mean for compiling annual totals
ICE is required by a 2018 DHS appropriations provision to publish death reports and has posted detainee death reports since April 2018; researchers therefore use ICE’s Detainee Death Reporting plus media and watchdog tallies to build annual counts, but methodological gaps remain [5] [6]. Academic reviews note studies often exclude people who die shortly after transfer or release and that CBP (Border Patrol) deaths are often reported separately, so a definitive combined ICE+Border Patrol annual series requires merging multiple official datasets and media/advocacy cross‑checks [5].
3. The record for Border Patrol custody is patchier in public reporting
Public sources compiled here do not supply a complete year‑by‑year list of deaths in Border Patrol custody from 2015 onward; Wikipedia and some congressional letters note specific batches (for example, a January 2026 letter cited 17 Border Patrol deaths reported to Congress during the first 12 months of the Trump administration), but that does not create an annual time series for every year 2015–2025 [8]. Independent watchdogs and media have documented individual CBP fatalities, including shootings and deaths in stations, but systematic annual aggregation in the public reporting provided is incomplete [9] [10].
4. Earlier years (2015–2024): reporting exists but not consolidated here
Longitudinal academic work and watchdog reports cover various windows (for example, reviews of FY2018–2023 deaths and historical investigations through 2015), indicating that deaths have occurred each year but that their causes and preventability vary; however, the sources supplied do not include a complete, cited count for every single year from 2015 to 2024 to reproduce a precise year‑by‑year tally here [5] [11]. Analysts note that 2015 was among the lower‑count years for ICE custody deaths, but a full annual series would require pulling ICE’s public “Detainee Death Reports,” CBP reporting, and media/watcher compilations and reconciling definitional differences [12] [6].
5. How to get a precise annual series and why figures differ
A reliable year‑by‑year count for 2015–2025 must be built from ICE’s official Detainee Death Reporting page (which details deaths and reporting requirements), CBP disclosures for Border Patrol custody deaths, and corroborating media and watchdog lists to capture deaths that may fall into reporting gaps [6] [5]. Discrepancies in public tallies arise from timing (fiscal vs. calendar year), whether deaths after release or transfer are included, and whether shooting deaths by agents are counted alongside in‑custody medical deaths — differences the major outlets and advocacy groups explicitly flag [5] [9] [13].
6. Interpretation and competing narratives
Advocates highlight the 2025 spike as evidence of systemic neglect and call for facility closures and accountability, while ICE emphasizes compliance with detention standards and points to official reporting procedures; both perspectives rely on overlapping but not identical datasets and agendas that shape emphasis [7] [6] [13]. Because the supplied reporting confirms 2025 as unusually deadly for ICE but does not provide a fully reconciled annual table for 2015–2024, any definitive year‑by‑year count requires extracting and reconciling records from ICE, CBP, OIG reviews and independent compilations [5] [8] [3].