How do ICE-related death rates compare to other federal detention agencies (e.g., Bureau of Prisons)?
Executive summary
ICE’s reported deaths have fluctuated sharply: a pandemic-era high death rate per 100,000 admissions of 10.833 in FY2020 fell to 0.939 in FY2022 before rising again in later years, and absolute annual totals ranged from three deaths in FY2022 to dozens in 2025, depending on the reporting window [1] [2] [3]. Direct numeric comparison to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) or other federal agencies is constrained by differences in reporting metrics, population turnover, and incomplete published BOP death-rate figures in these sources, but multiple indicators in the reporting suggest ICE detention has distinctive risks and transparency challenges not captured by raw death counts alone [4] [5] [6].
1. ICE’s death rates over time: dramatic swings and a pandemic spike
Scholarly tabulation shows ICE’s death rate per 100,000 admissions moved from a pandemic-era peak of 10.833 in FY2020 to 3.251 in FY2021, 0.939 in FY2022 and 1.457 in FY2023, with 12 deaths reported across FY2021–2023 versus 38 in FY2018–2020 — a pattern of sharp rise and fall tied closely to COVID conditions and case counts inside facilities [1].
2. Scale, churn and why rates are tricky to interpret
ICE’s detention system has a far quicker turnover than the federal prison population, meaning deaths per admission and deaths per person-year can tell different stories; Newsweek notes ICE’s faster turnaround and points out that annual three-death totals in 2022 were the lowest since Congress began mandated reporting, yet advocates warn that rising detention capacity could make more deaths “inevitable” as populations expand [4].
3. Pandemic-era comparisons: infections vs. deaths
During COVID, reporting highlighted disproportionate infection burdens in ICE settings — one account cited nearly 1,500 active COVID-19 cases in ICE detention compared with about 60 in the much-larger Federal Bureau of Prisons — an indicator that conditions for contagion (overcrowding, inconsistent vaccination programs) differed markedly between ICE facilities and the BOP [5].
4. Absolute counts, 2024–2025 surge and the 2025 record
Mainstream reporting and investigative compilations show a volatile recent trajectory: five to ten deaths in some years, four in 2023, three in 2022, and then a surge to at least 32 deaths in 2025 — a level that matched a two-decade record and included causes ranging from seizure and heart failure to suicide and infectious disease [2] [3].
5. Causes of higher observed risk: systemic failures and private contracting
Human-rights groups and medical reviews attribute many ICE deaths to preventable medical and mental-health care failures; Physicians for Human Rights and related reports assert that ICE reporting omits people released immediately before death and that independent reviews found most recent deaths were likely preventable, while more than 90% of detainees are held in privately run centers, introducing profit incentives and accountability gaps [6] [7] [8].
6. ICE’s institutional response and alternative framing
ICE and its health service corps cite emergency-care policies and budgetary outlays — IHSC executed nearly $324 million in healthcare spending in FY2022, ICE emphasizes that detainees are not denied emergent care — framing the issue as resource deployment rather than systemic neglect [2]. This stands in contrast to advocacy reports that argue oversight, contracting practices, and pre-release of dying detainees systematically undercount and obscure preventable deaths [6] [7].
7. What can and cannot be concluded from available reporting
The sources permit robust conclusions about volatility in ICE death rates, the outsized impact of COVID in some years, and credible allegations of preventable deaths and reporting gaps [1] [5] [6]. However, the evidence set provided does not contain consistent, comparable BOP death-rate figures or a harmonized metric (deaths per 100,000 admissions, per person-years in custody, or per average daily population) for other federal detention agencies, so a definitive numeric ranking of ICE versus BOP death rates cannot be made from these sources alone [1] [2].
8. Bottom line
ICE has experienced periods with elevated death rates (notably FY2020) and recent spikes in absolute deaths that have drawn serious criticism for preventable medical failures and opaque reporting, especially within privately run facilities; while available evidence highlights structural vulnerabilities that differentiate ICE detention from BOP custody (turnover, contracting, pandemic response), the materials provided do not include the necessary, directly comparable BOP rate data to declare conclusively that ICE’s death rate is higher or lower across all years using a single, standardized metric [1] [6] [8].