ICE Deaths in Custody
U.S. immigration detention has reached record highs, with more than 68,000 people in custody as of February 2026. Fueled by unprecedented new appropriations from Congress, ICE plans to expand its detention capacity to 100,000 or more this year, relying in part on commercial warehouses and tent encampments to rapidly increase the number of available beds. As the number of people in ICE custody has grown, deaths have followed, reaching 31 deaths in 2025, the highest number since 2004. (This figure does not include deaths that occurred during ICE arrests or before individuals were booked into a detention facility.)
Despite growing concerns from advocates and policymakers, no central source provides comprehensive data on deaths in ICE custody. To fill the gap, the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project partnered with journalist and lawyer Andrew Free to publish a dataset including every recorded death in ICE detention since October 2003.
Use the map to explore where deaths in ICE custody occurred across the United States.
What to Know
Immigration Violations Aren’t Criminal
Immigration status violations are civil, not criminal. The purpose of ICE detention is not to punish, but to ensure individuals’ presence for removal hearings and deportation. In most cases, the government has broad discretion over which individuals are detained.
Health Risk Factors: Immigration Detention vs the Criminal Justice System
Individuals in ICE custody are typically younger, much more likely to be foreign-born, and have fewer preexisting health conditions compared to individuals in jails or prisons. Moreover, ICE detention tends to be relatively brief—the average length of stay is less than 50 days. In contrast, individuals currently in state and federal prisons have an average length of stay of five to six years, with one out of every six people in prison serving a life sentence. Demographic, baseline health, and stay duration differences should be considered when comparing deaths in ICE detention to deaths in the criminal justice system or general U.S. population.
Who is Missing
The deaths represented here are likely a floor, rather than a ceiling, of the total number of deaths occurring in ICE detention. Individuals who are not formally entered into the ICE detention system are not routinely captured in these data. For example, this includes individuals who have been arrested but not yet admitted to a detention facility and individuals held in jails or prisons at the request of ICE (otherwise known as a “detainer”). These data also do not consistently include deaths that occur in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. Moreover, individuals with critical illnesses are sometimes released from ICE custody in the days prior to their death; individuals recently released are not included in legislative reporting requirements and therefore are not reflected in our data. Finally, prior to fiscal year 2018, Congress did not require ICE to publish death reports. Earlier death records reflect information released by ICE through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made by Andrew Free and others. Consequently, deaths may be missing for years prior to 2018.
Counting Deaths—Absolute Numbers vs. Rate
Our current data only show the absolute number of deaths in ICE detention. To appropriately contextualize and to capture the mortality rates, it is essential to know how many people were in detention, which is challenging in the immigration context due to frequent transfers between facilities. We hope to add this information in an update later this year.
Calendar vs Fiscal Year
In this dataset, deaths are reported by calendar year. To see the data by ICE fiscal year (beginning October 1), please see our GitHub.
Data Sources
Sources primarily include ICE press releases, ICE death reports (available 2018 onwards), and reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. For more, please see our GitHub.
Use the table below to explore deaths in ICE custody by year, facility, and state.