How do death rates per detainee compare across Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations according to independent analyses?
Executive summary
Independent analyses and reporting show different ways to measure deaths in ICE custody: by raw counts, by deaths per year, or by deaths per detainee over an administration; those choices change the headline. Raw deaths peaked in 2025 with 32 reported deaths under the Trump administration [1], but analyses that divide deaths by estimated total detainees conclude the Obama-era death rate per detainee was higher than recent years [2] [3], while the Biden years report fewer total deaths though rate comparisons for partial years are contested [4] [5].
1. What the raw counts say — Trump’s 2025 spike
Reporting aggregated events finds 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, a figure that matched the agency’s previous high in 2004 and made 2025 the deadliest single year in two decades (The Guardian) [1]; Axios and other outlets note that was higher than the 26 deaths ICE reported across all four Biden years [4]. These raw counts are unambiguous on the face of it — more detainees died in 2025 than in any single year recently — but raw counts do not account for how many people were held that year [1] [4].
2. Rates per detainee — the Obama-era rate was higher by some calculations
Analysts who compute deaths per estimated detainee population reach a different conclusion: the Crime Prevention Research Center calculated that if one divides 56 reported Obama-era custody deaths by an ICE-estimated cumulative detainee count it implies a rate of about 0.007% (one death per ~14,314 detainees), which it says exceeded the 2025/Trump-era rate of roughly 0.0054% (one death per ~18,594 detainees) based on 2025 arrests through November [2] [3]. Those calculations hinge on the chosen denominator — total processed or detained over the administration — and the period covered [2] [3].
3. Biden years: fewer deaths but contested short-term comparisons
ICE reported 26 detainee deaths across the four years of the Biden presidency, a smaller raw total than 2025’s 32 [4]. DHS spokespeople have pushed back in mid-2025 reporting, pointing out that the Biden administration’s death rate (deaths per detainee) through the first half of 2024 was higher than the comparable Jan–June 2025 rate cited by DHS for the Trump term, illustrating how short-term windows can flip the comparison [5]. Thus, depending on whether one compares full-term cumulative rates, single-year raw counts, or short seasonal slices, different administrations can appear worse.
4. Data gaps and methodological caveats that shape “who had the worst rate” conclusions
Independent watchdogs and reporting repeatedly warn that ICE data are imperfect: past administrations omitted deaths from congressional reports, agencies have sometimes released detainees shortly before deaths (reducing reported custody deaths), and death tallies can exclude Border Patrol or post-release deaths, all of which undermine precise per-detainee rate calculations (American Oversight; [2]0). Human Rights Watch and immigrant-justice groups have documented medical-care failures across eras that complicate attribution to policy alone [6] [7]. Any analysis that asserts a definitive “higher death rate under X” must therefore disclose how it defines the numerator and denominator and what deaths may be unreported [8] [6].
5. Bottom line — dependent on metric and transparency of data
According to calculations cited by Crime Prevention Research and amplified in several outlets, the Obama-era death rate per detainee was higher than the 2025 Trump-era rate when using cumulative detainee estimates [2] [3], even though 2025 produced the largest single-year death count in two decades [1] [4]. The Biden administration recorded fewer total deaths across its four years [4], but short-term comparisons and internal DHS statements show that selective time windows can yield different rate conclusions [5]. Independent analyses therefore agree there is no single uncontested answer: the comparison depends on which deaths are counted, which detainee totals are used, and whether omitted or post-release deaths are factored in [8] [6].