Were 67 people killed by Ice under the Obama administration?

1. What the claim says — and why it matters

A precise allegation that “67 people were killed by ICE under the Obama administration” asserts a specific, countable tally of detainee deaths attributable to Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2009 and 2016; such a figure is consequential because it implies systemic lethal failures in detention oversight and feeds broader debates about accountability, detention reform, and historical comparisons between administrations (no source in the set advances the 67 number) ^{[2] [1]}.

2. What the major investigative counts actually found

A coalition report — Fatal Neglect, published by the ACLU, Detention Watch Network and the National Immigrant Justice Center — examined FOIA documents and counted 56 deaths in ICE custody during the Obama administration, noting multiple cases in which deficient medical care likely contributed and criticizing ICE inspections that “ignored” those failures ^{[2] [1]}. Human Rights Watch separately analyzed 18 ICE death reviews released in 2016 and concluded that substandard medical care probably contributed to seven of those 18 deaths, illustrating that granular reviews and broader tallies coexist but do not produce a 67 total ^[3].

3. Discrepancies in counting and why different numbers appear

Different sources use different methodologies — some count every death that occurred while someone was formally in ICE custody, others restrict to completed internal death reviews, and still others include deaths in Border Patrol custody or in facilities operated by contractors; advocates’ FOIA-based tallies, government press lists and media investigations each produce overlapping but nonidentical lists, which explains why one report will say 56 while another highlights 18 reviewed cases or a different annual death-rate calculation ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

4. What reputable fact‑checks and journalists have said about related viral claims

FactCheck.org and Snopes have previously debunked circulating social-media claims that conflated or exaggerated counts — for example, false claims that 18 migrant children died in Border Patrol custody during Obama — and stressed that publicly available government and NGO records do not support those viral figures; those fact‑checks underscore how easily numbers are misread or misrepresented when advocacy lists, death reviews and different agencies’ responsibilities are conflated ^{[5] [6]}.

5. Context: trends, rates, and the limits of the records

Analyses focused on rates show the complexity: the Cato blog and other analysts point out that death rates per 100,000 detainees shifted over time during the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump years, and that aggregate counts must be read against detainee population sizes and reporting practices — but none of the supplied sources substantiates a 67-death total for Obama’s term ^{[7] [8]}. It is important to note the limits of available reporting: FOIA releases, NGO tallies and ICE’s own narratives may omit unresolved investigations or apply divergent cutoffs, so absolute certainty about a single headline number is constrained by those documentary differences ^{[2] [1]}.

6. Conclusion — the claim compared to the evidence

Given the reporting available here, the most defensible figure for deaths in ICE custody during the Obama administration cited by FOIA-based NGO work is 56; other reputable analyses focus on subsets (18 reviewed deaths) or rate calculations, but none of the provided sources corroborates a total of 67 deaths attributable to ICE under Obama, so the 67 figure is not supported by the documents and investigations in this collection ^{[1] [2] [3]}.