How many undocumented people have been killed while Trump was President to date
Executive summary
Precise accounting of how many undocumented people have been killed while Donald Trump has been President, as of February 1, 2026, is not possible from available public records because U.S. agencies do not compile a single, comprehensive tally and independent counts differ; however, documented deaths in U.S. immigration custody and deaths tied to federal immigration enforcement establish a conservative, minimum floor of roughly 40–45 deaths with significant uncertainty beyond that number [1] [2] [3]. Advocacy groups and media outlets offer higher estimates or broader definitions (including deaths after deportation), but those claims rest on different methodologies or assertions that are not centrally verified [4] [5].
1. ICE custody deaths: the clearest but incomplete dataset
The most consistently documented category—deaths inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody—shows a sharp rise under the current administration: The Guardian reported 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, matching a record last seen in 2004 [1], while other trackers cited 23–27 deaths for fiscal 2025 depending on methodology and reporting dates [2] [6], and major outlets noted that 2025 was the deadliest year in two decades for ICE detainees [1] [7]. Early 2026 reporting indicates additional custody deaths: PBS and other outlets reported at least six ICE-detention deaths in 2026 as of late January 2026, building on the 2025 toll [3]. Combining these public tallies yields a conservative ICE-custody minimum of roughly 38 documented deaths through the start of February 2026, while acknowledging overlap and differences in fiscal versus calendar-year counting across sources [1] [2] [3].
2. Deaths tied to enforcement actions outside detention: shootings and raids
Separate from custody figures are fatalities resulting from enforcement encounters—shootings during traffic stops, raids, or other operations. Multiple recent high-profile incidents have left migrants and bystanders dead: NPR documented the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Macklin Good by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, and PBS reported that the killing of Pretti was part of a string of at least four shooting deaths linked to immigration enforcement since Trump’s return to office [8] [3]. These operational fatalities are reported piecemeal by local and national media and law enforcement statements, and do not appear in ICE’s custody-death tallies; adding the documented enforcement shootings to custody deaths pushes the conservative minimum into the low-40s [8] [3].
3. Deaths after deportation and activist tallies: contested extensions
Advocacy groups extend the scope further by counting people who died after being deported or turned away; for example, LULAC claimed that “at least 150” people killed after removal were tied to the administration’s policies, a figure framed as political indictment rather than a government-verified count [4]. These post-deportation claims implicate policy causes and foreign-country violence and rely on sets of individual reports that are difficult to verify centrally; authoritative U.S. agencies do not publish a validated tally connecting removals to subsequent deaths [4] [9]. Reporting by outlets such as El País and migration policy organizations has also produced different counts by selecting different time windows and definitions, which explains why numbers vary across journalists and advocates [5] [6].
4. Why a single, exact number is impossible to produce with confidence
Federal record-keeping is fragmented: ICE publishes custody-death notices but does not—and cannot on its own—capture enforcement shootings outside facilities or deaths abroad after deportation, and other agencies and independent researchers use inconsistent time frames and criteria [1] [2] [9]. Media tallies and NGO databases provide critical documentation but often note missing data, ongoing investigations, and disputed causes of death; mainstream outlets have therefore reported differing minimum counts rather than a definitive total [1] [6] [2]. In short, public sources establish a verifiable floor—roughly 38 deaths in ICE custody through early 2026 plus several enforcement-related killings, implying a conservative minimum around 40–45 deaths—but they cannot produce a complete, authoritative count of “all undocumented people killed” while Trump has been President without broader, standardized data collection [1] [3] [2].
Conclusion
The safest, most defensible answer is this: there is no single, government-verified total for all undocumented people killed during President Trump’s term up to February 1, 2026; publicly documented deaths inside ICE custody total at least in the high 30s for 2025–early 2026, and adding documented enforcement shootings raises a conservative, evidence-based minimum into the low-to-mid 40s, while activist tallies and broader definitions point to substantially higher, but unverified, numbers [1] [2] [3] [4].