How many ICE deaths during 2025
Executive summary
Most independent reporting and rights groups conclude that 2025 was the deadliest year for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in two decades, with journalists and NGOs naming 32 deaths; official ICE notices and some contemporaneous tallies were lower (reporting “at least 30” to 31) as the year closed, producing a small but important discrepancy about the final count [1][2][3][4].
1. What the prominent outlets counted: 32 deaths
A cluster of national outlets, investigative projects and advocacy organizations reported 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, a figure repeated by The Guardian, The New York Times, Project On Government Oversight, Truthout and others that compiled agency notices and media reporting across the year to reach that total [1][2][5][6][7].
2. The official and contemporaneous tallies: “at least 30” or 31
Reuters, citing ICE notices published in mid-December, wrote that deaths in 2025 had reached a two-decade high and were reported as “at least 30” (with the agency’s public notices listing 30 by that date), and a widely used public list on Wikipedia recorded 31 deaths as of late January 2026, reflecting a slightly different cut depending on timing and disclosure [3][4].
3. Why the numbers diverge: timing, definitions and reporting practices
The gap between 30, 31 and 32 is rooted in how deaths are disclosed and tallied: ICE posts individual death notices, sometimes with delays, and outside reporters aggregate those notices, coroner rulings and local reporting; advocacy groups and investigative outlets that later reconciled local obituaries, court filings and agency statements reached a 32 total, while rolling counts published during December 2025 captured fewer deaths because some notices and autopsy rulings were posted after those snapshots [8][1][5].
4. What ICE says about reporting and review procedures
ICE’s formal detainee-death reporting policy requires field offices to notify headquarters within 12 hours and launches internal reviews by the Office of Professional Responsibility and other DHS entities, and the agency emphasizes it provides timely, multilayered reviews and notification to next of kin and consulates—procedures that shape when and how deaths are publicly recorded [8].
5. The stakes behind the count: accountability, oversight and narrative
Advocates and congressional Democrats framed the rising tally as evidence of systemic failures—highlighting overcrowding, reduced inspections, and alleged medical neglect—while ICE and DHS officials stress adherence to reporting standards and point to complex medical and investigative determinations; those competing frames influence whether a released figure is treated as a final statistic or a prompt for oversight [5][9][10].
6. Caveats, unresolved questions and limits of available reporting
Available sources document clear disagreement over the exact final number—some contemporaneous agency tallies and congressional letters reported “at least 30,” public aggregations later listed 31, and investigative compilations and media retrospectives converged on 32—but none of the provided documents here contains a single, final DHS-certified calendar-year total that reconciles every death, so the small numeric gap cannot be closed with certainty from these sources alone [3][4][1].
7. Bottom line
The preponderance of independent reporting and aggregated investigations lists 32 deaths in ICE custody in 2025, which multiple newsrooms and watchdog groups identified as the agency’s deadliest year since 2004; contemporaneous official notices and early tallies reported “at least 30” to 31, leaving a narrow discrepancy tied to reporting timing, classification and the pace of official disclosures [1][2][3][4][5].