How many residents were killed by ICE each year beginning in 2005?
Executive summary
An authoritative, year-by-year tally of people “killed by ICE” beginning in 2005 cannot be produced from the set of documents provided because neither a single consolidated table of annual deaths since 2005 nor a complete dataset spanning those years is included in the materials; instead, the available reporting offers snapshots, agency notes about reporting practices, and investigative totals for limited periods (e.g., FY2018–2020) that must be assembled from primary ICE reports and third‑party trackers for a full chronology [1] [2] [3]. What the sources do allow is verification of certain headline years and patterns — for example, 2006 is cited as having 19 deaths, 2004 had 32 deaths, and 2025 reached its highest tally in two decades with roughly 30–32 deaths — and a clear statement that ICE began publishing standardized death reports by fiscal year in 2018 as required by Congress, which is the best place to start assembling exact annual counts [4] [5] [6] [7] [1].
1. What the question likely means and why it’s tricky
The phrase “residents killed by ICE” appears to be asking for the number of people who died while in ICE custody each year starting in 2005, but the available records and reporting sometimes use different terms (deaths “in custody,” “in detention,” or broader “involving ICE”), and comprehensive, consistently formatted annual death tables are only publicly mandated and routinely posted beginning in FY2018, complicating direct year‑by‑year comparison back to 2005 without assembling multiple sources [1] [2].
2. What the sources actually document for specific years
Several reliable media and tracker sources identify particular years: reporting and watchdog compilations note that 2006 saw 19 detained immigrants die (a comparative anchor in a BuzzFeed/AILA excerpt), 2004 recorded 32 deaths (frequently used as the last high‑water mark before 2025), and late‑2025 coverage places that year’s total at roughly 30–32 deaths — the highest since the mid‑2000s — according to ICE notices compiled by Reuters, The Guardian and aggregated trackers [4] [5] [6] [7] [3].
3. How reporting changed in 2018 and why that matters for compiling counts
Congressional language in the DHS appropriations process in 2018 required ICE to publish all death reports within 90 days and ICE now posts a set of “detainee death” reports by fiscal year beginning with FY2018, which makes official counts for FY2018 onward directly obtainable from the agency’s site — prior years require FOIA pulls or third‑party datasets and media investigations to reconstruct [1] [8].
4. What empirical studies and watchdogs add — partial totals, causes, and trends
A peer‑reviewed synthesis and NGO reports document that deaths in recent years clustered around medical causes (including COVID‑19) and suicide, and that from April 2018 through the end of 2020 investigators identified 35 deaths in that window in ICE detention; these studies and advocacy briefs also argue many deaths were preventable and highlight systemic issues such as medical neglect and overcrowding as contributing factors, but they do not supply a full 2005‑to‑present annual table in the provided excerpts [2] [9] [8].
5. The practical path to a definitive year‑by‑year count
To produce the exact annual counts from 2005 forward requires assembling: ICE’s detainee death reports (FY2018 onward) plus historical death‑review documents released under FOIA, contemporaneous media lists (Reuters, Guardian, Wikipedia compilations cited here), and independent trackers like TRAC or OHSS datasets that draw on ICE administrative records; the sources included point to these repositories but do not themselves contain an exhaustive 2005–present year list in the material supplied [1] [6] [7] [3] [10] [11].
6. Transparency, incentives and interpretive cautions
Advocacy groups, academics and media have flagged selective release, redactions and differences in report formatting over time — and those institutional incentives (ICE controlling release cadence, NGOs pushing for fuller disclosure) mean any assembled yearly list should cite primary ICE death notices and cross‑check FOIA/death‑review documents to avoid undercounting or double‑counting; the materials provided document both the agency’s new posting practice and critics’ longer‑standing complaints about incomplete transparency [1] [8] [12].