Fifty people have died inside U.S. immigration detention facilities since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation effort in January 2025, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records — and the rate at which detainees are dying has more than doubled compared to the previous 15 years.
A Reuters analysis of ICE data found that between 2009 and 2024, one detainee died for every 3,848 people held in immigration facilities, based on average daily population figures. Since Trump returned to the White House, that rate has surged to roughly one death per 1,630 detainees, based on preliminary figures through early June.
The data was obtained by the Deportation Data Project through a public records request and later processed by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for reduced incarceration.
Three experts in detention-related deaths who reviewed ICE records and autopsies for Reuters said the climbing death rate and other findings raised serious questions about the level of supervision and medical care being provided at facilities whose populations have expanded dramatically under the Trump administration.
Detention numbers had already been rising in the final year of the Biden administration amid election-year pressure to increase enforcement. ICE was holding roughly 40,000 immigrants when Trump took office, up from a low of about 14,000 in February 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Trump, that number climbed to a peak of approximately 70,000 in January during an aggressive crackdown in Minneapolis, before dropping back to about 57,000 by early June.
Of the 50 deaths, 21 were discovered only after the detainee was already deceased or unresponsive, ICE records show. That group included 10 suicides. Sanjay Basu, an associate physician at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied ICE detention deaths and reviewed the data for Reuters, said those cases are particularly alarming because they may point to failures in both physical and mental health monitoring.
Heart attacks and cardiovascular-related problems accounted for 16 of the deaths. Medical experts said that pattern suggests possible shortcomings in initial health screenings and the management of chronic conditions.
Chanelle Diaz, an assistant professor of medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said the data and records indicate the agency is choosing to hold medically vulnerable individuals, producing what she called a “spike in preventable deaths.”
“The system is not designed for chronic-care management,” Diaz said, adding that at least two detainees who died had dementia and posed no threat to public safety.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to provide detailed records of the Trump-era deaths that Reuters reviewed. The agency said it remains committed to maintaining a “safe, secure and humane” environment in its detention facilities.
“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Experts reviewing the Trump administration’s detention death reports said those documents contained less information than reports from prior administrations. Many were missing critical details such as the detainee’s medical history, current medications, and specifics about emergency responses.
Michele Heisler, medical director at the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, highlighted the case of Santos Reyes Banegas, a Honduran man who died at the Nassau County Correctional Center on Long Island, New York, last September. According to an ICE report, a nurse noted symptoms of alcohol withdrawal during his intake at 11:22 a.m. on September 17, 2025. About two hours later, a doctor observed tremors and prescribed withdrawal medications, though the report does not name the medications or confirm they were given. At 6:25 a.m. the next day, Reyes was found unresponsive in his cell and was pronounced dead 20 minutes later.
Heisler said prompt hospital treatment can dramatically reduce the dangers of alcohol withdrawal. “It raises the question of why wasn’t he immediately sent to an emergency department,” she said. DHS said the death is still under investigation but that “the preliminary cause appears to be liver failure complicated by alcoholism.” An investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office found that the officer on duty did not cause Reyes’ death.
Among those who died was Tuan Van Bui, a 55-year-old Vietnamese man who arrived on November 19 at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana — a repurposed maximum-security prison the Trump administration has nicknamed the “Speedway Slammer.” Bui had suffered a stroke in late 2023 and had been prescribed medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol after being detained. In February, he filed a federal court petition seeking his release, saying he relied on a cane to walk and that detention was making his health worse. In March, a physician diagnosed him with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
On April 1, Bui collapsed. Fellow detainees called out to a nearby guard for help. Ibrahim Ibrahim, an Iraqi detainee who had learned CPR while working as a military translator during the Iraq War, immediately began chest compressions. According to Ibrahim and two other detainees who spoke with Reuters, it took approximately 15 minutes for a guard to arrive, and medical staff did not appear until 10 minutes after that.
“By the time medical came, he was dead,” Ibrahim said in a phone interview.
Federal immigration detention standards require a four-minute response time for medical emergencies. When asked about the timeline in Bui’s case, DHS spokesperson Bis said staff “immediately initiated” life-saving measures and “immediately contacted emergency services personnel, who swiftly responded.” The ICE death report on Bui stated that detention staff began CPR, started defibrillation, and called emergency medical services before a supervising physician declared him dead around 6 p.m. The report made no mention of Ibrahim performing CPR first. The local coroner attributed Bui’s death to natural causes stemming from cardiovascular disease.
Bui’s stepdaughter, Ly Wang, said her family had been bracing for the possibility he would be deported to Vietnam. “The worst case scenario for us was that he was going to get deported,” she said, “not that he was going to die.”
In another case, staff at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania discovered the body of 32-year-old Chinese immigrant Chaofeng Ge hanging in a shower stall early on the morning of August 5. Ge had been transferred to the immigration facility less than a week earlier after spending seven months in a Pennsylvania county prison awaiting trial on fraud charges involving $154.62 in gift cards. His brother said through a translator that Ge had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2023 and had been working as a delivery driver in New York City.
Records from the county prison where Ge had been held show he attempted suicide by hanging on January 25 of last year. Emergency care was provided at a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center facility, which noted in a summary: “Patient should be monitored for suicidal ideation/plan.” Two days after that attempt, a social worker documented signs of depression and bipolar disorder, and a psychiatrist later prescribed an antipsychotic drug and an antidepressant.
Tom Weber, CEO of PrimeCare Medical, which provided medical services at the county prison, said his facility sent Ge’s records to ICE when he was transferred. Reuters was unable to independently confirm delivery of those records. ICE stated in a press release that Ge arrived at the immigration detention center without medical records from his prior incarceration, and that a nurse conducting his intake interview — through an interpreter — recorded that he had no prior medical or mental health conditions and placed him in the general population.
In a separate case, Mohammad Paktiawal, 41, a former Afghan special forces soldier who had been evacuated to the United States by the U.S. military during the Taliban’s 2021 takeover, was detained by ICE on March 13 in a Dallas suburb while driving five of his six children to school. That same day he was transferred to a hospital for chest pain and shortness of breath. The following morning, hospital staff noticed his tongue was swollen, administered an allergy medication, and began life-saving measures three minutes later, but he was pronounced dead.
Experts who reviewed the ICE records found no indication of a failure in emergency response in Paktiawal’s case. However, his brother Naseer Paktiawal said the family is still waiting for answers from ICE and the Dallas County medical examiner three months after his death. Paktiawal had applied for asylum and was the sole provider for his family, working at a local Afghan market, his brother said.
Paktiawal had been indicted in September on a felony charge of improperly using more than $200 in federal food stamps for business purposes. Two months later he was arrested for attempted theft of roughly $220 in groceries and then released. Under the Laken Riley Act, enacted shortly after Trump took office, ICE is required to detain anyone arrested for shoplifting and similar offenses — a policy that would have made Paktiawal a detention priority under the new rules.
In a press release confirming Paktiawal’s death on March 15, ICE highlighted his criminal record. The release read: “Criminal illegal alien from Afghanistan with previous arrests for fraud and theft passes away at Texas hospital.”
