How many ICE deaths under Biden

1. What the major outlets and watchdogs say about the Biden years

Multiple news outlets and advocacy groups have repeatedly contrasted the surge in detainee fatalities in 2025 with the Biden years, reporting that the 2025 toll—variously described as “at least 30” or 32 deaths—surpassed the total number of deaths recorded while Biden was president, which they therefore portray as lower than that 2025 figure ^{[1] [2] [6]}. That comparison is the clearest quantitative anchor in the available reporting: journalists use the 2025 total as a benchmark to show that deaths rose sharply after the transition to a new administration ^{[1] [6]}.

2. Official counts exist but are distributed and incomplete in public reporting

ICE maintains a Detainee Death Reporting page with procedures and individual reports for each in‑custody death; those institutional reports are the official source for confirmed deaths but are posted as discrete reports rather than a single summarized presidential‑period total ^[3]. Independent compilations—such as a running Wikipedia chronology and academic papers summarizing fiscal‑year data—aggregate those reports, but they too can differ because some deaths are reported late, and reports sometimes exclude individuals released shortly before death ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Fiscal‑year snapshots give clues but not a definitive presidency total

Reporting cited a figure of 12 deaths in fiscal year 2024 and noted that that year’s total was “far higher than the typical loss of life under detention reported during the Biden administration,” implying earlier Biden years had still fewer deaths per year ^[7]. Academic work covering FY2021–2023 compiles deaths per fiscal year and examines causes and reporting gaps, yet the excerpts provided do not list a single summed total for the entire Biden presidency and explicitly warn that public tallies can underestimate deaths because of reporting practices and releases just before death ^[5].

4. Why exact arithmetic is hard: reporting gaps and methodological limits

Investigations and NGO reports have long documented that deaths can be omitted from official tallies if detainees are released shortly before dying or if DHS/ICE reporting practices are delayed or narrative‑styled, and scholars warn that published counts likely understate detention‑related deaths for those reasons ^{[5] [4] [8]}. Media stories comparing administrations therefore rely on best‑available counts and fiscal‑year snapshots rather than a single authoritative “Biden total,” a constraint visible across the supplied sources ^{[1] [6] [7]}.

5. The cautious, evidence‑based answer

Based on the supplied reporting, the most supportable statement is that the cumulative number of deaths in ICE custody during the Biden presidency was lower than the 30–32 deaths reported for calendar year 2025, and that at least one fiscal‑year snapshot (FY2024) recorded 12 deaths ^{[1] [2] [7]}. The sources supplied do not publish a single, definitive total for 2021–2024; official ICE individual death reports and independent lists exist and could be tallied to produce a precise number, but that compiled total is not present in the provided materials ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

6. What to do next to get a precise count

A complete, auditable total would require compiling ICE’s Detainee Death Reports and cross‑referencing independent chronologies and academic audits to capture deaths possibly omitted from agency lists ^{[3] [4] [5]}. The supplied sources point to where such a verification could be done—ICE’s reporting portal, the Wikipedia chronology, and peer‑reviewed fiscal‑year studies—but none of the supplied snippets supply the final summed figure for the Biden era, so the available reporting can only support the bounded conclusion above ^{[3] [4] [5]}.