How many deaths has there been both citizens and illegal under Trump’s administration by ice?
Executive summary
Under the second Trump administration, the number of people who died while in ICE custody during 2025 is widely reported at roughly 30–32, making it the agency’s deadliest year in two decades according to multiple outlets and advocacy groups [1] [2] [3]. Deaths of U.S. citizens at the hands of immigration agents are far fewer in raw count but carry outsized political and social consequences: at least one high-profile fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen—Renee Good—has been reported and is under investigation, while media counts of deadly uses of force by immigration officers vary [4] [5] [6].
1. ICE custody deaths: a clear spike, reported at about 30–32 in 2025
News organizations and advocacy groups converged on a similar conclusion: roughly 30–32 people died while in ICE custody in calendar year 2025, a tally that matched or exceeded the previous record set in 2004 and made 2025 the deadliest recent year for detainee deaths [1] [2] [3]. Reporting traced those deaths to causes ranging from infection and Covid-19 to uncontrolled chronic disease, suicide and injuries, and linked the spike to a surge in detention numbers and overcrowding under the administration’s ramped-up enforcement [7] [1] [2].
2. Conflicting tallies and reporting gaps — why counts differ
Different outlets publish slightly different totals because of timing, inclusion criteria and agency reporting practices: ICE’s own public releases and advocacy trackers sometimes lag, some deaths are recorded after transfers to hospitals (but remain "in custody"), and fiscal-year versus calendar-year tallies diverge; for example, an advocacy brief noted 23 deaths in one fiscal year window while The Guardian later documented 32 deaths in calendar 2025 [7] [1]. ICE officials have pushed back with contextual rates and caveats — claiming historically low proportional death rates without supplying full underlying datasets — leaving independent counts to rely on news reports, obituaries and advocacy records [1].
3. Deaths of U.S. citizens involving immigration agents: rare but consequential
Fatalities of U.S. citizens struck by immigration enforcement actions are far rarer in the public record, but at least one high-profile case—Renee Good, shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis—has been widely reported and sparked national protests and political debate; that shooting is under federal and state investigation [4] [6]. Media databases and projects tracking immigration-agent shootings report varying totals of deadly incidents: some analyses cite roughly four deaths from immigration-agent shootings in the period referenced, while other compilations that include a broader set of federal immigration agencies list higher totals [5] [8].
4. Shootings by immigration agents: multiple data sets, multiple interpretations
Compilations of shootings by immigration agents since January 2025 differ by scope; one public tracking project counted at least 27 shooting incidents across immigration agencies with eight deaths, while local and national news analyses focused on ICE and related agencies reported roughly a dozen to two dozen shooting incidents and somewhere between four and eight fatalities depending on which agencies and incidents were included and when the count was taken [8] [3] [5]. Observers warn that underreporting is likely because not all use-of-force incidents are publicly disclosed and federal-local investigative boundaries complicate aggregation [5].
5. What the numbers do — and do not — show about policy and responsibility
The rise in detainee deaths coincides with a dramatic increase in detentions and a policy emphasis on large-scale sweeps and fewer humanitarian releases, a context advocates explicitly link to overcrowding and failures of medical and mental-health care [7] [9]. The administration and ICE defend their practices and point to claimed low proportional death rates, but transparency gaps, differing methodologies for counting deaths, and the mixing of ICE and other DHS-agency uses of force mean that precise attribution—especially of deaths of U.S. citizens versus noncitizens killed by agents—remains contested in reporting [1] [8].