· 52 people died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody during the first 500 days of President Trump’s second term, reflecting a soaring mortality rate.
· ICE so severely limits the information it provides to Congress, families, and the public that oversight is nearly impossible.
· The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Congress should act immediately to reduce the number of people in detention and to ensure access to adequate health care in line with the United States’ human rights obligations.
(Washington, DC, June 25, 2026) – The rate of people dying in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has soared, with at least 52 deaths reported since the start of President Donald Trump’s current administration, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights said in a report released today.
The 72-page report, “Dying in Detention: Rising Deaths in an Expanding US Immigration Detention System,” documents the increasing number of deaths in ICE custody through expert statistical and medical analysis, exposing a rising mortality rate and raising serious questions about the adequacy of the health care provided by ICE and its contracted personnel. The increase in the mortality rate comes as the Trump administration is subjecting record numbers of immigrants to mandatory detention, including in inhuman and degrading conditions, while gutting internal oversight mechanisms.
“People are dying in ICE custody at the highest rate in many years, even after accounting for the surge in detention,” said Brian Root, senior technology and human rights advisor at Human Rights Watch. “DHS and Congress should act immediately to reduce the number of people in detention and to overhaul conditions, including by ensuring access to adequate health care in line with the United States’ human rights obligations.”
Human Rights Watch conducted quantitative analysis of deaths in ICE custody from October 1, 2015, through June 4, 2026, analyzing trends in the rate of deaths over time. Physicians for Human Rights conducted medical analysis of the 39 deaths in ICE custody during the first year of the current Trump administration, largely based on limited public information.
The organizations examined several cases in greater depth than previously reported, drawing on interviews with family members, attorneys, and former cellmates of the deceased and, in two cases, reviewing supplementary medical records.
In one case, Maksym Chernyak, a 44-year-old man from Ukraine, suffered a stroke after showing unmistakable signs of a medical emergency, which detention staff witnessed but failed to act on. The resulting delays in transferring him to higher-level care almost certainly contributed to his death, the groups found.
In another case, Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, 32, died in ICE custody in 2025, following a Covid-19 diagnosis and 12 days in isolation. To access records related to his detention, treatment, and death, Vargas’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act request in October 2025, followed by a lawsuit in December. As of early May 2026, they had not received any additional information.
“Only a mother who has lost her child knows what I am feeling,” his mother said. “I want my child, and I can’t do anything.”
During the first year of the second Trump administration, the number of people in ICE detention increased 77 percent, from about 40,000 to over 71,000. At the same time, the rate of deaths in ICE custody rose 140 percent. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights have documented abusive conditions in US immigration detention facilities since the 1990s.
The current Trump administration has dismantled the already limited internal oversight mechanisms within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—ICE’s parent agency—making it harder to obtain information, pursue recourse for abuse, or hold the agency and its contractors accountable.
Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights found that ICE fails to disclose adequate information about the circumstances surrounding deaths in its custody, leaving critical questions unanswered about the care detained people received and whether its provision met international human rights standards. In addition, the agency’s reporting is often delayed, in apparent violation of its own reporting requirements, which include public disclosure of a death within 48 hours, and more detailed public reporting within 30 days. The limited information currently made available raises serious concerns about the nature of many of these deaths and the adequacy of people’s care in custody.
“ICE so severely limits the information it provides to Congress, families, and the public that oversight is nearly impossible,” said Dr. Katherine Peeler, the report’s co-author, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights. “In the cases where we do have access to ICE and outside hospital records, we are seeing a breathtaking breach of the duty of care.”
The deaths of people in US immigration detention point to potential violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which protects the right to life and obligates states to take steps to safeguard the lives of those in its custody. Poor detention conditions and failure to provide adequate medical care, can also amount to violations of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in the ICCPR and the Convention Against Torture (CAT).
DHS and its contractors should fully and publicly account in a timely fashion for every death in their custody. Congress should reduce the number of people subject to detention, prioritize alternatives, and withhold funding for any further detention expansion. It should robustly address the rising death toll, inadequate medical care, and chronic failures of transparency and reporting by DHS. Congress should also establish new, independent oversight mechanisms with real enforcement authority, including mandatory independent investigations of every in-custody death and public disclosure of all death reviews and autopsy reports, and impose penalties on ICE for failure to comply.
DHS funding has substantially increased with the recent appropriation of $70 billion through 2029. Congress should legislate standalone oversight mechanisms to ensure that the money does not expand an abusive system that has failed to protect lives.
“Families have a right to know what happened to their loved ones in ICE detention,” Peeler said. “As long as people are held in US immigration custody, the government has a legal and moral obligation to protect their lives, and when it fails, a public obligation to account for what happened. Right now, it is failing on all counts.”
Read the full report, Dying in Detention: Rising Deaths in an Expanding US Immigration Detention System, on our website.
For more about Human Rights Watch reporting on US immigration visit: https://www.hrw.org/united-states/immigration
To set up interviews with Human Rights Watch staff contact:
- Brian Root (English): +1-310-720-3458; rootb@hrw.org
- Reagan Williams (English, Spanish): +1-332-999-7014; or williar@hrw.org
- Ida Sawyer (English, French): +1-917-213-0939; or sawyeri@hrw.org
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.