How many people died in ICE custody across all U.S. administrations and how are those deaths documented?
Executive summary
The public record does not support a single, definitive count of all people who have died while ever in ICE custody because agencies, advocacy groups and reporters use different definitions and datasets; recent reporting shows spikes: roughly 30–32 deaths in calendar-year 2025 alone and multiple multi-year tallies for prior administrations [1] [2] [3]. Deaths are documented through a patchwork of ICE internal death reports, congressional and inspector‑general reviews, academic studies and media investigations — but those records contain gaps, inconsistent definitions and contested omissions [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. Recent peak: 2025 and competing counts
Multiple outlets and ICE itself reported an unusually high number of custody deaths in 2025, but the headline count varies by source: ICE and news summaries show about 30 deaths in 2025 (Reuters: “at least 30” and noted four in one week) while The Guardian assembled a timeline naming 32 people who died in custody in 2025, and Axios reported at least 31 based on ICE releases — differences that reflect calendar vs. fiscal-year reporting and definitional choices [1] [3] [2].
2. Administration-by-administration tallies cited in reporting
Available reporting gives partial aggregates by administration rather than an all-time total: a 2025 advocacy/NIJC summary noted 56 deaths during the Obama administration (focusing on certain years) while ICE-era reviews and advocacy groups documented 52 deaths from 2017–2021 and 26 deaths across the four years of the Biden presidency as reported by Axios [8] [6] [2]. Congressional Democrats and oversight officials have also tallied custody deaths in combined ICE/CBP totals — for example, a House count cited 53 total deaths in ICE or CBP custody since the start of the Trump administration — underscoring variation depending on whether CBP is included and on time windows [9].
3. Why a single cumulative total is elusive
The principal reasons a single “across all administrations” number cannot be produced from the supplied reporting are definitional differences and reporting gaps: ICE reports deaths in custody but uses fiscal-year and agency‑definition parameters that can exclude people who died after release or in allied custody; independent groups often include related deaths (e.g., Border Patrol or post‑release fatalities) that ICE’s public counts omit [10] [5]. Advocacy and FOIA-based investigations have repeatedly found missing or delayed investigations and unexplained absences of full death‑review documents — for example, ACLU reporting shows ICE produced documents on some deaths but left multiple cases without complete investigations for months [7] [11].
4. How ICE says deaths must be documented
ICE’s formal policy requires immediate internal notification — the field office director must report any detainee death within 12 hours to senior ICE custody officials and public affairs/legal offices — and congressional appropriations require public posting of detainee death reports within 90 days, with past death‑review documents placed in ICE’s FOIA library [4] [5]. ICE also conducts multilayered administrative, clinical and, for suicides, psychological reviews after a death, per agency policy [4].
5. Gaps, challenges and competing narratives
Independent reviews, scholarly articles and watchdog reports document systemic problems in investigations, inspections and transparency: reports compiled by the ACLU, NIJC and others found failures in medical reviews, long delays in producing investigative files, and inspections that did not always reflect underlying care deficiencies [7] [8] [6]. Journalists and researchers note that ICE’s choice of language, categorization and the narrow scope of “in‑custody” definitions can reduce counts relative to broader advocacy tallies, creating competing narratives about scale and responsibility [5] [10].
6. What can be said with confidence
Using only the documents and reporting supplied: 2025 was the deadliest calendar year in roughly two decades for people who died while in ICE custody with media and ICE tallies clustered around 30–32 deaths [1] [3] [2]; ICE has internal reporting requirements (12‑hour notification and 90‑day public reports) intended to produce individual death reports [4] [5]; multiple independent studies and oversight reports document dozens of custody deaths across recent administrations but disagree on inclusion criteria and completeness [8] [6] [11]. Absent a single reconciled dataset made public that standardizes definitions across agencies and time, any single cumulative “across all administrations” figure would require assumptions not supported by the supplied sources.