How many ICE deaths during Obama's first term and second term?
Executive summary
The most concrete figure in the provided reporting is that 56 people died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody during the Obama administration, a total compiled by advocacy groups using ICE documents obtained via FOIA [1] [2]. The sources do not provide a reliable, sourced breakdown that separates those 56 deaths cleanly into “first term” (2009–2012) and “second term” (2013–2016), and reporting reviewed here cannot confirm an exact split by term [3] [2].
1. The headline number: 56 deaths under Obama, per advocacy FOIA research
A coalition report and related coverage cite a FOIA-based tally of 56 deaths in ICE custody during the Obama presidency, a figure repeated by the ACLU, Detention Watch Network, the National Immigrant Justice Center and other advocacy outlets that produced the Fatal Neglect report and press materials [1] [2] [3]. That count — and the report’s central claim — focuses less on partisan blame than on alleging systemic medical and oversight failures that the groups say contributed to multiple deaths [1] [3].
2. What the oversight reviews say (and don’t say) about causation and counts
Human Rights Watch reviewed ICE’s death reviews for 18 detainee deaths occurring from mid‑2012 to mid‑2015 and reported that independent medical experts concluded care failures probably contributed to seven of those 18 deaths, but HRW’s analysis covered a subset of cases and was not presented as a complete count for either presidential term [4]. ICE’s own public death-review mechanism and advocacy compilations overlap but do not align perfectly, and the ODO/OPR reviews ICE conducts often identify violations without reaching definitive conclusions about whether the violations caused the deaths [4] [3].
3. Why a term-by-term split is not available in these sources
None of the provided documents, press releases or FOIA summaries explicitly break the 56‑death total into the administration’s first four years versus its second four years; the Fatal Neglect FOIA analysis reports the overall Obama‑era total but does not present a vetted, source‑cited split by 2009–2012 and 2013–2016 in the material supplied [1] [3] [2]. Public compilations such as ICE’s own lists and secondary aggregations (e.g., media timelines, Wikipedia) could potentially be used to create a year‑by‑year tally, but those sources were not provided in full here and may vary depending on inclusion criteria [5].
4. Competing narratives and where agendas influence counting
Advocacy groups emphasize patterns of medical neglect and undercounting in official oversight to argue systemic failure [1] [3], while fact‑checking and mainstream outlets have pushed back on specific mischaracterizations — notably, false claims that large numbers of migrant children died in custody during Obama’s terms [6] [7]. Government lists and media timelines may use different inclusion rules (e.g., excluding deaths occurring while fleeing agents or in Border Patrol custody), which can produce divergent totals; the advocacy FOIA compilation that produced 56 made methodological choices that should be examined if a term‑by‑term split is required [3] [2] [5].
5. Bottom line and recommended next steps for precise term counts
The best-supported answer available in the supplied reporting is that 56 people died while in ICE custody across the entire Obama administration, according to FOIA‑based research published by ACLU/DWN/NIJC and summarized by other groups [1] [2]. The supplied sources do not provide a clearly sourced separation of that figure into first‑term versus second‑term counts; obtaining an accurate split would require consulting ICE’s complete “List of Deaths in ICE Custody” by date or reconstructing year‑by‑year listings from primary ICE death reports and cross‑checking FOIA materials [3] [5]. Acknowledging that limitation is essential: existing advocacy and watchdog reporting documents systemic problems and totals but stops short of offering a reliable, cited count by presidential term in the materials provided [1] [4] [3].