How many people died in ICE custody in the United States in 2025 by month?
Executive summary
Available reporting establishes that 2025 was the deadliest year for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in roughly two decades, with major outlets reporting a year-end total in the range of 30–32 deaths [1] [2] [3]. However, the precise month-by-month tally cannot be fully reconstructed from the documents provided because ICE’s public death-reporting and media accounts show gaps and timing inconsistencies, even as multiple sources converge on December as the single deadliest month [4] [3].
1. The headline totals: 30–32 deaths reported for 2025
Reuters, reporting mid-December and late-December agency notices, counted at least 30 in-custody deaths for 2025 and described the total as the highest since 2004 [1] [5], while investigative summaries and watchdog reporting give a year-end figure of 32 deaths and note that 2025 exceeded 2024 by nearly threefold [2] [3]. Those counts are the best available aggregate numbers in the provided reporting but reflect slightly different cutoffs and methods of compilation across outlets [1] [2].
2. December emerges as the deadliest month — but even that number varies
Multiple outlets and trackers identify December 2025 as the single deadliest month: The Guardian and several aggregators counted December as having six deaths [3] [6], while other outlets and local reporting named seven December deaths and highlighted four occurring within a four-day span [7] [4]. The discrepancy stems in part from reporting lags and how outlets count deaths announced late in the month or reported by ICE only after its internal investigations [4] [8].
3. Why a full month-by-month breakdown is not available in these sources
ICE is required to post information about in‑custody deaths within 30 days, but reporting on the agency’s public Detainee Death Reporting page lagged in 2025 and was not consistently updated through the end of the year, making external compilation difficult [4]. Media and watchdog tallies rely on ICE press releases, local coroner reports, and NGO tracking; when ICE press releases or the Detainee Death Reporting portal are delayed or incomplete, month-by-month accounting suffers [8] [2].
4. Pieces of the calendar: specific deaths tied to months in ICE releases and press reports
ICE press releases and coalition trackers do record individual deaths with dates scattered across the year — for example, notices of deaths in June, July and August are included in ICE and press-aggregation logs (Jesus Molina‑Veya found unresponsive in June; Tien Xuan Phan died July 19; Chaofeng Ge and others announced in August) — but the provided materials do not assemble every named case into a complete monthly table that sums to the year-end total [9] [8].
5. Reconciling differences, motives and limits of the sources
Mainstream wire services (Reuters) emphasize official ICE notices and aggregate counts [1], The Guardian and watchdogs compile named profiles and timelines to reach a 31–32 total [3] [2], and advocacy outlets highlight systemic causes and higher monthly counts while calling attention to under‑reporting or lag [4] [10]. Each source has different institutional incentives: agencies emphasize process and protocol, watchdogs stress oversight failures, and local outlets report individual cases — together they corroborate a deadly year but not a definitive month-by-month ledger [1] [2] [4].
6. Bottom line and what’s needed to answer the question fully
Based on the reporting provided, the defensible answer is that between 30 and 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, with December identified as the deadliest month (six to seven deaths) but a complete, verifiable month-by-month breakdown cannot be produced from these sources alone because ICE’s public reporting lagged and media compilations vary [1] [2] [4] [3]. Producing a rigorous month-by-month table would require either ICE’s fully updated Detainee Death Reporting entries for all of 2025 or a consolidated dataset from a newsroom or oversight group that lists each death with official dates and month attribution.