Fact check: Which ICE detention facilities have reported the most deaths in 2025?

1. What the main claims say — multiple facilities keep recurring in reports

Reporting across ICE press releases and independent outlets asserts that deaths in ICE custody in 2025 have occurred at a set of recurring facilities: Stewart Detention Center (GA), Eloy Detention Center (AZ), Central Arizona Correctional Complex (AZ), Karnes County IPC (TX), Moshannon Valley Processing Center (PA), Krome SPC (FL), and Broward Transitional Center (FL). ICE’s death-notice list names facilities tied to individual decedents, and news outlets cite those same facilities when compiling totals, making these locations the most frequently mentioned in the available record ^{[1] [3]}.

2. Concrete counts reported so far — rolling tallies, not a final leaderboard

Different sources provide different snapshots: advocacy-oriented trackers noted seven deaths in the first 100 days of the administration (early 2025), while later summaries say 12 people had died in custody since October 2024, and reporting into September 2025 cites at least two deaths at Stewart alone in 2025. These figures show an upward trend in reported deaths, but they reflect rolling counts compiled at different dates, not a synchronized dataset, so firm facility rankings for 2025 remain provisional across sources ^{[4] [5] [2]}.

3. Patterns of causes — suicide, medical events, transport-related deaths

Available summaries identify multiple causes of death: suicides are specifically noted at Stewart (including a referenced third suicide at that facility since 2006), while other deaths are attributed to medical conditions or occurred during transport. Reporting names individual cases — Marie Blaise (chest pain at a Florida facility), Abelardo Avellaneda-Delgado (died during transport) — which illustrate that both acute medical events and self-harm have been factors in 2025 deaths ^{[3] [2] [4]}.

4. What the ICE list provides — strengths and limitations of official notices

ICE maintains a running list of press releases announcing deaths in adult detention since December 2015 that includes names, nationalities, and facility locations; this is the most direct government source for linking deaths to specific sites. That list allows aggregation by facility, but it does not provide a consolidated, final “most deaths” ranking for calendar-year 2025 in the materials provided, and ICE notices typically lack granular context about health care delivery, preexisting conditions, or investigatory outcomes ^[1].

5. How independent outlets frame the issue — trend warnings and causation debates

News organizations and advocacy trackers frame the data as part of a broader pattern: several outlets warn that deaths in detention may surpass prior years and link the rise to aggressive detention policies and increased detention populations. These accounts emphasize systemic risk factors — overcrowding and limited medical resources — even though the immediate cause for each death can be discrete and individual. The reporting thus pairs facility mentions with policy critique rather than strictly a facility-by-facility statistical exercise ^{[5] [6]}.

6. Disagreements and potential reporting biases — what to watch for

Sources differ in emphasis: ICE’s releases are transactional and location-specific while media and advocacy groups compile cumulative tallies and interpret trends. Each source can reflect an agenda — ICE to document occurrences, advocates to highlight systemic failures, and news outlets to synthesize both. Because numbers depend on cut‑off dates and inclusion rules (e.g., fiscal-year vs. calendar-year counts), apparent disparities between lists and tallies are expected and should not be read as contradictions without aligning methodologies ^{[1] [3]}.

7. Missing pieces and what’s needed to produce a definitive ranking

To produce a verified facility-by-facility ranking for deaths in 2025 requires: a synchronized dataset with a fixed date range, confirmation that counts exclude duplicates and cover all ICE jurisdictions, and access to post-mortem or investigatory findings to clarify cause and contributing factors. The materials provided do not include such a harmonized dataset; current claims about “which facilities have the most deaths in 2025” remain best‑effort tallies rather than definitive rankings ^{[1] [2]}.

8. Bottom line — provisional list and next steps for verification

Based on the available materials, the most frequently reported sites with deaths in 2025 are Stewart, Eloy, Central Arizona Correctional Complex, Karnes County IPC, Moshannon Valley Processing Center, Krome SPC, and Broward Transitional Center, but no source in the provided set supplies a finalized, independently audited count. Confirming a definitive ranking requires cross‑checking ICE’s death notices with time‑bounded compilations from independent trackers and obtaining facility-level investigative reports; until then, any “most deaths” list should be described as provisional and date‑dependent ^{[1] [2]}.