How many people were killed by ice agents during Presedent obama’s term

Checked on January 9, 2026
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Executive summary

Public records included in the provided reporting do not supply a definitive count of people who were directly killed by ICE agents during President Barack Obama’s two terms; the closest concrete figure available in these sources is that 67 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama years, a statistic that does not mean those deaths were caused by ICE agents acting with lethal force [1]. Investigations and advocacy reporting from the period documented systemic problems in detention and oversight that led to deaths and reforms, but those sources stop short of isolating an official tally of agent-inflicted killings [2].

1. What the official data in these sources actually show: deaths in custody, not agent homicides

The only clear numerical figure appearing in the provided reporting is that 67 people died while in ICE custody during the Obama administration, a count sourced to ICE records and highlighted in a FactCheck analysis — but “died while in custody” is distinct from “killed by agents,” because the causes include medical neglect, illness, suicide and other circumstances that are not necessarily the result of use of force by officers [1].

2. Why that distinction matters and what oversight reporting found

Advocacy groups and investigative reports documented a pattern of neglect, medical failures and secrecy in ICE detention that contributed to preventable deaths and prompted reforms under Obama; the Detention Watch Network and related reports showed FOIA-driven revelations and New York Times investigations that spurred the 2009 detention reforms, underscoring systemic responsibility for fatalities even when a death was not a direct shooting by an agent [2].

3. Lack of a sourced count of people killed by ICE agents using lethal force

None of the supplied articles or archival material in the search results provides a compiled, authoritative count of individuals explicitly killed by ICE agents (for example, by shootings or other lethal use of force) during 2009–2017, and the reporting repeatedly emphasizes the difference between detention deaths and use-of-force homicides — meaning the exact number of agent-inflicted killings during Obama’s term cannot be established from these sources alone [2] [1].

4. Context from policy and criticism: high enforcement and political debate

The Obama administration carried out a high volume of detentions and removals — more than 2 million deportations over the presidency according to migration-policy analysis and other contemporaneous summaries — and that enforcement footprint, plus critiques that ICE and Border Patrol practices were abusive, means the era generated many contested incidents and complaints even if the provided records don’t enumerate agent homicides [3] [4].

5. What additional, authoritative data would be needed to answer the question definitively

A conclusive answer would require an authoritative, incident-level dataset or review from DHS/ICE, the Department of Justice, or a comprehensive investigative compilation that categorizes deaths caused by agency use of force (shootings, restraints resulting in death, etc.) versus deaths from medical conditions or other non-force causes; the current sources supply detention-death totals and critical reporting but not that use-of-force count [1] [2].

6. Bottom line for readers following the records provided

Based on the documentation available in these sources: 67 people died in ICE custody during the Obama administration, but the sources do not claim—and do not provide evidence—that all or any of those were homicides committed by ICE agents, and no explicit, sourced tally of persons killed by ICE agents during Obama’s term appears in the material provided [1] [2]. Any definitive figure for “killed by ICE agents” would require records or an investigation that specifically identifies deaths attributable to agency use of force, which the supplied reporting does not include.

Want to dive deeper?
How many people died in ICE custody nationwide each year from 2009 to 2017, and what were the documented causes?
What DHS or DOJ investigations have concluded that ICE agents used excessive force resulting in death since 2000?
How did the Obama administration change ICE detention oversight and what effect did those reforms have on detainee mortality?