How many death under ice custody during all Trump terms ?

1. How the headline number is reached

Adding the two headline figures reported in the documents produces 68 total deaths: 36 deaths cited for Trump’s entire first term (2017–2020) in a congressional-staffed press release referenced by Representative Judy Chu’s office ^[1] and 32 deaths reported for 2025 — widely reported as the deadliest year for ICE in more than two decades — by outlets including The Guardian and Axios ^{[2] [5]}. Each of those source numbers is explicitly reported in the material provided and combining them gives the straightforward cumulative total across both terms through 2025 ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Why different outlets sometimes give different counts

Various organizations and outlets published differing tallies for portions of 2025 and the fiscal year: the American Immigration Council and several trackers reported 23–25 deaths in particular reporting windows or fiscal-year tallies, while other outlets documented 32 deaths for calendar-year 2025; those discrepancies reflect different cutoffs (fiscal vs. calendar year), whether deaths in Border Patrol custody are included, and the timing of ICE public releases ^{[3] [4] [6]}. Reporting notes that ICE’s public counts and narrative-style releases changed under the second Trump administration and that oversight letters have challenged whether ICE’s reporting fully complies with congressional requirements, which complicates simple aggregation ^{[7] [1]}.

3. Context for the rise in deaths in 2025

Multiple sources attribute the 2025 spike to a rapid expansion of detained populations under the Trump administration’s enforcement surge — ICE detained roughly 69,000 people at one point and the agency dramatically increased arrests and deportations — producing overcrowded facilities and strained medical care that critics say contributed to preventable deaths ^{[8] [6] [3]}. Human-rights groups, lawyers and congressional offices cited overcrowding, poor medical care, and delays or denials of treatment as recurring factors in documented deaths, and independent reviews of earlier years found many custody deaths were preventable with adequate care ^{[2] [3] [9]}.

4. Limits, ambiguities and what the sources do not resolve

The sources do not provide a single, ICE-authorized cumulative ledger explicitly labeled “total deaths in ICE custody across both Trump terms,” and some numbers refer only to particular windows (fiscal year, calendar year, first 100 days, or “first nine months”), while others exclude Border Patrol custody or deaths that occurred after release but reportedly stemmed from prior detention — all of which mean the 68 figure is a best-effort aggregation of publicly reported counts in the provided material rather than a definitive, agency-certified grand total ^{[6] [7] [3]}. Congressional letters and advocacy groups also emphasize underreporting or delayed reporting, signaling that official tallies may be revised or contested ^{[1] [10]}.

5. Alternative readings and why they matter

An alternative — more conservative — reading would count only deaths that ICE itself has publicly confirmed within specific reporting categories, which some trackers put lower (for example, 23–25 in certain fiscal reporting windows), producing a smaller cumulative total if one excludes the 32 figure or treats it as overlapping with other tallies ^{[3] [4]}. Conversely, counting Border Patrol custody deaths and related post-release fatalities would increase the human toll but requires datasets not consolidated in the provided sources; the available reporting therefore supports the 68 total as the most direct synthesis of the major published figures in these sources while acknowledging legitimate methodological disputes ^{[7] [2]}.