Families are searching for explanations, judges are demanding accountability, and the government keeps closing doors. Inside the record-breaking death toll in immigration detention.
A Record Nobody Should Want to Break
In 2025, 31 people died in ICE custody — the highest number in more than two decades. 2026 is on track to surpass it. As of March 21, 2026, the known death toll under the Trump administration had reached 42. One every four days, according to a researcher at Syracuse University. Just three weeks ago, the pace was one every six days. The numbers are accelerating.
Nearly 70,000 people are currently held in immigration detention facilities across the United States — more than at any other point in the country’s history. The Trump administration plans to keep expanding that capacity, converting industrial warehouses into new facilities capable of holding up to 10,000 people each.
And as the number of detainees rises, the death toll rises with it.
The Deaths That Put the System Under the Microscope
Recent weeks have added more names to a list that was already alarming.
On March 21, 2026, Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal, a 41-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who had worked alongside U.S. special forces in military operations in his home country, died in ICE custody in Texas. Days earlier, Royer Pérez-Jiménez, just 19 years old, died in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” at a facility in Florida. He became the youngest person to die in ICE custody since Trump returned to the White House.
But the case that has shaken the country most is that of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, a Cuban national who died on January 3, 2026, at Camp East Montana, the detention camp built on Fort Bliss in Texas. ICE first said he had died after experiencing “medical distress.” Then it said staff had tried to save his life during a suicide attempt. But the El Paso County Medical Examiner determined the death was a homicide: the cause was “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression” while he was being restrained by guards, along with multiple other injuries. It was the first homicide ruling linked to ICE staff in at least 15 years.
Days later, on January 14, Víctor Manuel Díaz, 36, a Nicaraguan man detained in a Minneapolis suburb, was found unresponsive in a medical clinic inside Camp East Montana. ICE described his death as a presumed suicide. But his family rejects that version: according to his attorney, Díaz was not depressed and was about to be deported to Nicaragua, where his mother and two sons — ages 10 and 15 — were waiting for him.
Opacity as Policy
What connects nearly all of these cases is not just the death itself — it is the impossibility of finding out what actually happened.
When Campos died, the local El Paso County Medical Examiner conducted the investigation and issued the homicide ruling. When Díaz died just days later, ICE decided the autopsy would not be conducted by local authorities but by the military. The family’s attorney asked out loud what many are wondering: why would the federal government — one of the parties involved — be in charge of investigating the death of one of its own detainees?
“El Paso County is a disinterested party. The U.S. government is an interested party,” attorney Randall Kallinen told The Guardian.
Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso and has visited Camp East Montana on multiple occasions, said she understands there is video of Campos’s death — but that authorities have not released it. “I have zero faith in the DHS Office of Professional Responsibility being transparent about this homicide,” she said.
Beyond the individual cases, the pattern is systemic. ICE is legally required to report deaths in its custody within 90 days. Several reports arrived late. One, related to a death in Missouri, came in 35 days past the legal deadline. In many cases, families wait months without receiving basic information about the circumstances surrounding their loved one’s death.
Senator John Hickenlooper, joined by 21 Senate colleagues, sent a formal letter to DHS demanding answers and denouncing the agency’s requirement that members of Congress give seven days’ advance notice before visiting detention facilities — a policy a federal court recently blocked as unlawful.
The Stories Behind the Numbers
Every death has a name, a story, and a family searching for answers.
Emmanuel Damas, 56, Haitian, died on March 2, 2026, at a facility in Florence, Arizona, after reporting severe tooth pain. Massachusetts Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, along with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, sent a letter to DHS stating that “ICE’s failure to provide timely medical care to Mr. Damas appears to have contributed to his worsening medical condition and tragic death.” DHS did not respond.
Huabing Xie, 53, Chinese, collapsed at the Adelanto Processing Center in California on September 29, 2025. A nurse noted abnormal heart activity and left to seek authorization to transfer him to a nearby hospital. She did not return for nearly 45 minutes. Xie died of a heart attack. DHS did not address the 36-minute window described in the autopsy report.
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, Mexican, complained of severe rectal pain for three weeks at the same Arizona facility. According to the San Bernardino County coroner’s autopsy report, his family stated that the ICE facility “did not provide him with medical attention and were only administering Tylenol.” When he was finally taken to a hospital on September 21, 2025, staff found an abscess requiring surgery. Ayala-Uribe died before the procedure could take place.
Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, 48, Guatemalan, arrived at ICE with documented liver problems from his very first day of detention in September 2025. Over the following two months, he complained of bleeding gums, body aches, insomnia, rectal bleeding, acid reflux, headaches, and other symptoms. He was not sent to a hospital until November 19 — by then it was too late. When his body arrived at the El Paso Medical Examiner’s office, he weighed 123 pounds. He died on December 3.
What the Government Says — and What the Evidence Shows
DHS responded to The Guardian’s questions with a statement dismissing any abnormal increase in deaths, citing a mortality rate of 0.009% of the detained population without providing a source for the figure. “For many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said.
The available data tells a different story. In 2022, three people died in ICE custody. In 2023, seven. In 2024, eleven. In 2025, 31 — the highest in more than twenty years. And 2026 is already on track to surpass that record.
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff documented more than 1,000 credible reports of human rights abuses in detention facilities between January 2025 and January 2026, across facilities in 28 states and Puerto Rico. The administration has not responded to five formal congressional oversight letters.
Six Suicides in 13 Months
One of the most disturbing aspects of the crisis is the number of suicides. Six deaths by suicide have occurred in ICE custody over the past 13 months — the highest figure in an equivalent period in the last eight years, according to available government records.
In some cases, families openly question that conclusion. The mother of Brayan Garzón-Rayo, a 27-year-old Colombian who died in a Missouri county jail in April 2025, told St. Louis Public Radio that her son “didn’t have a reason to take his own life.” ICE’s record of his death shows that at intake he had denied having suicidal thoughts — and that two days later he tested positive for tuberculosis and COVID-19, complaining of severe headaches, body aches, and sweating. His mental health appointment, scheduled for days later, was rescheduled due to his COVID diagnosis.
Víctor Manuel Díaz’s family also rejects the official account. “He didn’t have the drive to kill himself,” they told the Associated Press.
The Labyrinth Families Face
For the families of the deceased, the process of obtaining information is a bureaucratic nightmare.
They must navigate between multiple federal agencies, local medical examiners and coroners, facilities closed to the public, private contractors operating the centers, and in some cases local law enforcement. Each operates under different rules about what information can be disclosed and to whom.
In Missouri, for example, state law does not specify whether autopsy reports are public records — leaving the decision to the discretion of each local coroner. Some counties release them; others refuse. The result is that families from different states who lost a loved one under similar circumstances may end up with vastly different levels of information.
“When state public records laws are silent or ambiguous on a particular category of records, access can end up turning on local practice or the discretion of individual officials,” explained Jonathan Peters, a professor of law and journalism at the University of Georgia.
What Comes Next
Congresswoman Escobar put it plainly: “The federal government is failing miserably, either through incompetence or abject cruelty and neglect.”
The situation is difficult to reverse in the short term. ICE received billions of dollars in new funding last summer, continues to expand detention capacity, and the administration has consistently rejected characterizations of “inhumane conditions” as false.
Meanwhile, the deaths continue. And the families keep waiting.
“Putting someone in immigration detention shouldn’t amount to a death sentence. But that’s increasingly a risk, given last year we saw a record number of people die in detention because of neglect, abuse, or delayed medical care,” said Rebekah Wolfe, director of the Immigration Justice Campaign at the American Immigration Council.
Sources
- Justin Glawe, Record Deaths in US Immigration Custody Expose Systemic Failures, The Guardian, March 21, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/21/ice-deaths-trump-administration
- NPR, Deaths in ICE Custody Already Surpass Last Year’s Total, March 10, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/10/g-s1-111238/immigration-detention-deaths-custody
- American Immigration Council, 6 Deaths in ICE Custody and 2 Fatal Shootings: A Horrific Start to 2026, February 11, 2026. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org
- Al Jazeera, US Witnessed Many ICE-Related Deaths in 2026. Here Are Their Stories, January 27, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com
- Senator Jon Ossoff, U.S. Immigration Detention Oversight Report, January 2026. https://www.ossoff.senate.gov
- Senator John Hickenlooper et al., Letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Deaths in ICE Detention, January 2026. https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov
- WOLA, U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Detention Deaths, DHS Appropriations, ICE Warrants, January 2026. https://www.wola.org
- Detention Watch Network, 4 ICE Detention Deaths in Just 10 Days into the New Year, January 2026. https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org
- Wikipedia, List of Deaths in ICE Detention (updated March 15, 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detention
- American Immigration Lawyers Association, Deaths at Adult Detention Centers. https://www.aila.org
