ICE has reduced public reporting on detainee deaths to brief summaries just as deaths hit a 20-year high — 16 in 2026 alone, compared to 11 in all of 2024.
The Numbers Are Going Up. The Information Is Going Down.
Sixteen people have died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody so far in 2026. In all of 2024, that number was 11. In all of 2025, it was 33 — the highest annual total in more than two decades.
At the same time that those numbers have been climbing, ICE has been quietly dismantling the transparency mechanisms that allowed the public, Congress, and advocates to understand what was happening to people in its care.
Until late 2024, when a detainee died in federal immigration custody, ICE was required to release a detailed three-page report within 90 days. Those reports included timestamps of medical observations, records of medications administered, timelines of events leading up to death, and official cause of death determinations. They were posted publicly on ICE’s website and provided to Congress within two days of each death.
Starting in mid-December 2024, that changed. The detailed reports were replaced with four-paragraph summaries. As of mid-February 2026, the ICE website that posts these investigations has not been updated at all — leaving at least four deaths from more than 90 days ago with no final report released. When asked, DHS attributed the delays to a government funding shutdown, calling public reporting a “non-essential function.”
Fewer details. More deaths. That is the combination the public is now being asked to accept.
Who Has Died — and What We Don’t Know
Among the deaths with unresolved official determinations are two men whose cases illustrate exactly why detailed reporting matters.
Victor Manuel Diaz was a 36-year-old man from Nicaragua with no criminal background. He was arrested in Minneapolis on January 6, 2026, as part of Operation Metro Surge — the same ICE dragnet that swept up Andrea Pedro-Francisco and thousands of others in the Twin Cities area. He was transferred to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. Eight days later, he was dead. ICE described his death as a “presumed suicide.” No official cause of death determination has been released.
Heber Sanchaz Domínguez was a 34-year-old Mexican national. He was arrested for driving with an expired license — a minor traffic infraction. Seven days after his arrest, he was found hanging at a detention facility in Georgia. The official cause of death was listed as “under investigation.” It still is.
Neither of these men had criminal records. Neither had been convicted of anything. Both were dead within days of being detained. And in both cases, the public has been given almost no information about what happened, whether it could have been prevented, or whether anyone is being held accountable.
Camp East Montana: The Deadliest Facility
Much of the congressional scrutiny — and much of the death toll — has centered on Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent detention facility on Fort Bliss military base along the Texas-Mexico border near El Paso. It is the largest immigration detention facility in the country.
We have written about Camp East Montana before in the context of Andrea Pedro-Francisco’s case. The conditions there are well-documented: overcrowding, disease outbreaks of COVID-19, tuberculosis, and measles, inadequate medical care, and food so poor that worms were found in it. ICE terminated its $1.3 billion contract with the facility’s operator, Acquisition Logistics, following those reports.
One detainee died at Camp East Montana in January in what ICE initially described as an attempted suicide. The local coroner later ruled it a homicide. Victor Manuel Diaz, described above, also died at the facility. The pattern at Camp East Montana is not a series of isolated incidents — it is a documented institutional failure.
DHS has responded to scrutiny with a consistent line: “All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
The deaths, the coroner’s findings, and the firsthand accounts of people who have been held there tell a different story.
Over 60,000 People Are Still Detained
Despite a slight decrease in ICE arrests — down 21% since February — more than 60,000 people remain in ICE custody as of this week. That is nearly double the number detained before Trump returned to office.
The decrease in arrests does not signal a relaxation of enforcement. As we reported last week, the administration has shifted toward a quieter strategy of attrition — cutting housing, licenses, loans, and services to pressure immigrants into leaving on their own. The detention numbers reflect a system still operating at extraordinary scale, under conditions that independent observers, members of Congress, and international human rights organizations have repeatedly flagged as dangerous.
DHS noted that the current death rate represents “a very small percentage of the overall detained population.” What that framing omits is that the absolute number of deaths is at a historic high, that the transparency mechanisms for understanding those deaths have been gutted, and that many of those dying have no criminal record and were not a removal priority under any previous administration’s guidelines.
The Transparency Problem Is the Point
It would be one thing if deaths were rising and the government were responding with more transparency, more accountability, and more urgency. That is not what is happening.
The reduction of detailed death reports to four-paragraph summaries was not announced publicly. It was not the subject of a policy change memo. It simply happened — quietly, in mid-December, as the detention population was swelling and deaths were accelerating. The ICE website that was supposed to document these deaths stopped being updated in February.
Democrats in Congress have demanded answers. Legislation to establish mandatory medical care standards for people in detention — legislation supported by Representatives including Angie Craig, who we also covered this week in connection with Andrea Pedro-Francisco’s case — has stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress.
What the public is left with is this: a federal agency detaining more than 60,000 people, reporting deaths at a 20-year high rate, releasing less information about each death than at any point in recent memory, and describing all of it as within its established standards.
The people dying in these facilities are not abstractions. Victor Diaz was 36. Heber Sanchaz Domínguez was 34. Andrea Pedro-Francisco, whose case we have covered closely, is 23 years old and has a tennis ball-sized ovarian cyst that has gone largely untreated for over two months. She is still alive. The question of whether she remains that way is, in part, a question about whether anyone outside those walls is paying attention.
If Someone You Know Is Detained
If a family member or someone you know has been detained by ICE, time matters. Detained individuals have legal rights — including the right to an attorney, the right to a bond hearing in many cases, and the right to medical care. Those rights are not always enforced without outside pressure, which is exactly why having legal representation from the moment of detention is critical.
Powers Law Group has experience representing detained individuals, filing emergency motions, and working to secure release for people held in facilities including Camp East Montana. If someone you know is detained and their medical condition is being ignored, that is an emergency — and there are legal tools available to address it.
Do not wait. Contact Powers Law Group today.
Sources
- Laura Strickler, As Immigrant Deaths in Custody Grow, ICE Reduces What Details Are Made Public, NBC News, April 15, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com
- KFF Health News, Deaths in ICE Custody at Highest Rate in Over Two Decades, 2026. https://www.kff.org
- Minnesota Reformer, Texas Judge Denies Petition to Release Woman Detained in Minnesota With Medical Condition, April 7, 2026. https://minnesotareformer.com
- Associated Press, Conditions at Camp East Montana: Detainee Accounts and Death Records, 2026. https://www.apnews.com
- Human Rights Watch, Systemic Medical Neglect in US Immigration Detention, 2025. https://www.hrw.org
- Amnesty International, USA: Andrea Pedro-Francisco — Urgent Action / Medical Concern, AMR 51/0878/2026, 2026. https://www.amnesty.org
- ACLU, Medical Care in Immigration Detention — Documented Cases, 2025. https://www.aclu.org
- National Immigration Law Center, Rights of Immigrants in Detention, 2025. https://www.nilc.org
- TRAC Immigration, ICE Detention Population and Death Data, 2026. https://trac.syr.edu
- Powers Law Group, A Minnesota Woman With a Dangerous Medical Condition Has Been Detained by ICE for Months, April 2026. https://www.rubypowerslaw.com
