How many deaths in ICE custody has the agency officially reported each year since 2003?
Executive summary
A precise, year-by-year tally of deaths “officially reported” by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2003 to the present exists in primary ICE records but is not summarized in the reporting provided here; ICE has published detailed lists covering October 2003–2017 and an online death-reporting page for fiscal year 2018 onward, which together are the authoritative sources for any annual counts [1] [2]. Independent trackers and advocacy groups cite cumulative and recent-year totals that diverge depending on methodology (for example, Detention Watch Network and The Guardian report different snapshots for 2025), so a defensible per‑year table requires extracting entries directly from ICE’s lists and fiscal‑year reports [3] [4].
1. What the official records are and where they live
ICE has publicly released compilations of in‑custody deaths in multiple formats: PDF lists spanning October 2003 to June 2017 and an earlier PDF covering October 2003–December 2013, and since FY2018 an online “Detainee Death Reporting” portal that posts individual death reports after each incident [1] [5] [2]. Those ICE documents are the agency’s official accounting and — by the agency’s own description — are intended to satisfy congressional reporting requirements adopted in the DHS appropriations language beginning in FY2018 [2].
2. Why media and advocacy totals differ from the ICE records
News outlets and advocacy groups compile their own tallies for different reasons and with different inclusion rules — some count only deaths occurring inside detention centers, others include people who died in hospitals while still under ICE custody or who died shortly after release and were later reviewed — so their year‑by‑year numbers can diverge from ICE’s published lists [4] [6]. For example, reporting about 2025 ranges from “at least 20 deaths” in one outlet’s mid‑year review to counts of 23, 25, or even 32 in other sources depending on whether they use fiscal year vs. calendar year and which post‑release deaths they include [7] [8] [9] [4].
3. What the provided sources allow — and what they do not
The sources supplied include ICE’s raw lists (2003–2017 and 2003–2013) and ICE’s official reporting page for FY2018 onward, plus media and NGO tallies; however, none of the provided materials contains a pre‑assembled, single table in this packet showing the number of ICE‑reported deaths for each calendar year 2003–present, so it is not possible from the materials at hand to state an exact official count for each year without reprocessing ICE’s lists and FY2018 reports [1] [5] [2] [4].
4. How to get an accurate year‑by‑year official count
A reliable method to produce the requested per‑year official counts is to download ICE’s October 2003–June 2017 PDF and the FY2018 onward listings from ICE’s “Detainee Death Reporting” page, then aggregate the dates of death by calendar year (or by fiscal year if that is preferable), taking care to document whether hospital deaths while still under custody are included — ICE’s own entries specify location and date and thus permit consistent counting when extracted directly from the source documents [1] [2].
5. Context and competing narratives readers should know
Advocacy organizations and investigative outlets have repeatedly flagged spikes in particular years (notably 2004, 2020 during the COVID‑19 surge, and 2025 in recent reporting) and attribute variation to policy changes, facility conditions, and data‑collection differences; ICE’s site and academic work note that reporting rules changed after FY2018, which improves transparency but also complicates direct comparisons across the entire 2003–present span unless methods are standardized [4] [6] [2]. Where sources disagree, the primary ICE lists remain the arbiter of “officially reported” deaths, but those lists must be queried and counted to produce the precise annual figures requested [1] [2].