How many noncitizen detainees died in ICE custody each year from 2000–2025?
Executive summary
A reliable, complete year-by-year tally of noncitizen detainee deaths in ICE custody for 2000–2025 is not available in the supplied reporting; public sources converge only on recent totals and on the fact that 2025 was the deadliest year in roughly two decades, but they disagree about the precise 2025 count and do not publish a full 2000–2025 series [1] [2] [3] [4]. What can be stated with confidence from the reporting provided: 2025 saw an anomalously high number of deaths—reported as roughly 30–32 by mainstream outlets and advocacy groups—while ICE’s own detainee-death reporting conflicted with outside tallies for that fiscal year [1] [2] [5] [3] [6].
1. What the records actually show for 2025: 30–32 deaths, depending on the source
Multiple news organizations and advocacy groups reported that 2025 produced what they called the deadliest calendar year for ICE in about 20 years, citing between “at least 30” and “32” deaths in ICE custody in 2025; Reuters, The Guardian, People and Project On Government Oversight all publish totals in that 30–32 range [2] [1] [5] [7]. Several outlets tied the spike to expanded detention levels and policy changes under the administration in office that year, and activists and lawmakers described the totals as the highest since 2004 [8] [9] [7].
2. ICE’s own public tally differs from outside counts
ICE’s “Detainee Death Reporting” page and its published fiscal-year notices did not align neatly with the media and watchdog tallies: some reporting notes ICE listed only 18 deaths for fiscal year 2025 even as outside tallies placed the calendar-year total far higher, producing an official-versus-independent-data discrepancy that has drawn critique from lawmakers and human-rights advocates [3] [6] [4]. That mismatch matters because ICE counts and the fiscal-year framing can understate or obscure deaths that advocates say were medically related or occurred shortly after release from custody [4] [3].
3. Why a year-by-year public series from 2000–2025 is not deliverable from the supplied sources
The documents supplied do not include a complete historical table of annual detainee deaths going back to 2000; instead they provide episodic reporting, commentary that 2025 was the worst since 2004, scattered ICE notices, and third‑party tallies with different inclusion rules [1] [9] [3] [4]. Because the user’s question asks for a full 2000–2025 annual series, the correct journalistic answer—based on the available reporting—is that the required data are not present in these sources, and producing a definitive year-by-year list would require consulting ICE’s complete archived death reports, DHS Inspector General records, or independent databases not included here [6] [4].
4. Conflicting counts and counting rules: why totals vary
Discrepancies among sources stem from differences in counting windows (calendar year vs fiscal year), whether deaths after immediate release are included, and whether deaths in Border Patrol custody or in contracted facilities are counted under ICE totals—factors explicitly cited by watchdogs and noted in the Wikipedia and congressional reporting summarized in the supplied material [4] [10] [3]. Advocacy groups and journalists have also documented cases they say were omitted or minimized in official releases, which contributes to higher independent tallies [11] [7].
5. Credible conclusions and next steps for a full 2000–2025 table
Given the supplied reporting, the defensible conclusions are: 1) 2025 was widely reported as the deadliest ICE custody year since 2004 with roughly 30–32 reported deaths [1] [2] [7]; 2) ICE’s own fiscal-year reporting showed a lower figure for FY2025, producing an unresolved discrepancy [3] [6]; and 3) a comprehensive year-by-year count from 2000–2025 cannot be compiled solely from these sources [4]. To assemble the requested series accurately would require accessing ICE’s full historical detainee-death reports, DHS Inspector General records, congressional compilations, and independent trackers such as Detention Watch Network—records not contained in the materials provided here [6] [4] [11].