How many people died during ICE raids in Obama administration
Executive summary
The available reporting does not provide a documented count of people who died specifically "during ICE raids" in the Obama administration; instead, advocacy and investigative reports count deaths in ICE custody more broadly. A joint ACLU–Detention Watch Network–National Immigrant Justice Center report states that 56 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama administration [1] [2].
1. What the question asks — and why it matters
As phrased, the user is asking about deaths that occurred during the operational moment of ICE raids, a narrow event-based category that is distinct from deaths that occur while someone is detained after an arrest; most public records and NGO investigations collect and report deaths in custody rather than isolating how many died at the precise moment of a raid, which makes the specific query difficult to answer from the available sources [2].
2. What the reporting actually documents: deaths in ICE custody under Obama
A 2025 report from the ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and the National Immigrant Justice Center — Fatal Neglect — tallies that 56 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama administration, and it links many of those deaths to substandard medical care and inspection failures rather than to on-scene lethal force during arrests [1] [2].
3. Why advocates focus on custody deaths rather than "during raids" deaths
Advocacy groups and investigative journalists have historically tracked deaths in detention because custody deaths are easier to document through FOIA releases, internal inspection reports and family/lawyer accounts than the narrower category of in-raid fatalities; the Fatal Neglect report cites prior New York Times investigations and FOIA analyses that exposed systemic secrecy and failures tied to detention deaths, which shaped the focus on custody outcomes [2].
4. Broader context on enforcement levels under Obama (and how it affects comparisons)
Scholarly and policy sources emphasize that the Obama era saw high levels of removals and use of ICE enforcement capacity — with millions removed or returned over the administration — but those enforcement totals do not translate directly into a count of raid-era fatalities; migration-policy analyses document enforcement scope and strategy changes under Obama but do not offer a separate tally of deaths that occurred specifically during raids [3] [4].
5. Caveats, alternative perspectives and potential biases in sources
The 56-count comes from NGOs and civil‑rights organizations (ACLU, DWN, NIJC) that frame the data to highlight systemic neglect and demand reforms, which is an explicit advocacy perspective [1] [2]; government agencies such as ICE and DHS historically have produced different internal accounting and have disputed NGO characterizations or the completeness of public data, but the supplied sources do not include an ICE-authored, raid‑specific fatality count for the Obama years [2] [3].
6. Bottom line answer
There is no documented number in the provided reporting for people who died specifically "during ICE raids" in the Obama administration; the best available, widely cited figure in the supplied sources is that 56 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama presidency, a total compiled and reported by the ACLU, Detention Watch Network and the National Immigrant Justice Center [1] [2]. Any narrower figure for deaths occurring at the precise moment of raids is not present in the provided materials and would require further primary-source investigation (internal ICE incident reports, FOIA releases, contemporaneous law‑enforcement records) to verify.