56-count for deaths in ICE custody during Obama’s term- is this during all 8 years or obama’s presidency
Executive summary
The 56-count widely cited in recent reporting refers to deaths that occurred during the Obama administration — meaning the period of his two presidential terms (2009–2017) — as reported by advocacy groups that examined ICE records via FOIA and other sources [1] [2] [3]. That total is a compilation by outside researchers and advocates, not a single official ICE public tally, and different datasets and time windows used by ICE and watchdogs produce different headline numbers [4] [5].
1. What the “56” claim actually comes from
The figure of 56 deaths in ICE custody under Obama originates in advocacy reporting that reviewed ICE records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and prior NGO investigations; Fatal Neglect and allied organizations use those FOIA documents to count 56 deaths during the Obama administration [1] [3]. Mainstream reporting also paraphrases this framing, explicitly describing the 56 deaths as occurring “during the course of Obama’s two terms, from 2009 to 2017” [2].
2. How that number was compiled and what it includes
The groups behind Fatal Neglect and related analyses counted individual deaths listed in ICE records across the administration; their report highlights a subset of eight deaths from 2010–2012 as demonstrative case studies of catastrophic medical failures [1] [4]. The 56 total therefore is an aggregated count across multiple years within Obama’s presidency rather than a single-year figure or a tally limited to a narrow window — the methodology relies on agency documents produced or released to advocates [3].
3. Why other counts look different
ICE’s own public disclosures and internal death-review documents present different slices of the problem: Human Rights Watch noted that ICE released death reviews in 2016 covering 18 of 31 deaths acknowledged since May 2012, showing that agency acknowledgements and outside tallies do not always match because of differing start dates, reporting protocols, and whether transfers to hospitals while still in custody are included [5]. That variance in definitions and timeframes is why watchdog counts (56 over Obama’s presidency) and ICE’s partial published reviews (e.g., 31 deaths since May 2012) diverge [5] [4].
4. What advocates and watchdogs are emphasizing
Advocates use the 56 figure to highlight systemic failures in detention medical care and oversight during the Obama years, pointing to repeated inspection failures and medical-standard violations that they say contributed to many of these deaths [1] [4]. The Fatal Neglect report and allied releases foreground medical-care breakdowns and insufficient inspections as explanatory themes for a subset of deaths, and explicitly link the 56-count to the administration’s entire term rather than a single fiscal year [1] [4].
5. Alternative interpretations and caveats
Some reporting frames similar numbers in comparative contexts — for example, contrasting Obama-era totals with later years when ICE reported sharp spikes in deaths [2] [6] — and others caution that aggregated totals depend on whether suicides, post-transfer hospital deaths, or pre-2009 cases are included [3] [5]. Importantly, the evidence available in these sources does not provide one single, definitive public ICE table labeled “56 deaths, 2009–2017”; rather, the number is the result of outside analysis of ICE records and therefore should be read as an NGO-compiled total for the Obama presidency, subject to differences in methodology and reporting cutoffs [3] [4].
6. Bottom line
The best reading of the reporting provided: the “56 individuals” figure refers to deaths counted by investigators and advocates over the span of Barack Obama’s presidency (his two terms, 2009–2017), not to some shorter one- or three-year window; specific reports also highlight smaller multi-year subsets (for example, eight deaths examined from 2010–2012) to illustrate systemic problems [2] [1] [4].