At Least 35 Deaths Reported in ICE Custody Since October as Federal Watchdog Launches Review
More than 35 people have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention since October, marking what medical researchers call a 22-year high in the fatality rate — a surge that has prompted a federal watchdog review and left families across the country searching for answers about what happened to their loved ones in custody.
The deaths come as President Donald Trump’s administration has expanded detention capacity nationwide, with the number of people held by ICE rising from roughly 40,000 before inauguration to over 68,000 by February — a 70% increase. At the same time, ICE announced it would stop reporting deaths that occur within 30 days of someone’s release from custody, reversing a 2021 policy.
Among the dead: Parady La, a 46-year-old Cambodian American father and longtime Philadelphia resident, who died in January just three days after his arrest. His daughter, Jazmine La, says her family still doesn’t know what happened in his final hours.
“There’s obviously a lot missing, a lot we don’t know, and the uncertainty of it all is really hard,” Jazmine told TIME magazine. “It makes it hard to move on or grieve properly.”
Also dead: Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese national who died by suicide after five days in ICE custody, according to an autopsy report. The report noted Ge had a psychiatric history — yet ICE’s detainee death report claimed he had “denied any past medical or mental health conditions” upon transfer to the facility.
Ge’s autopsy report also documented that when he was found, his hands and feet were bound and bedsheet strips were tied around his chest — restraints applied before his death, the report noted, because they caused bruising. His brother and legal counsel say those details raise serious questions about the nature of his death.
A third case: Jose Chajon-Raxon, a Guatemalan man who had a seizure July 19 at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall detention center, one day after being processed in. The Department of Homeland Security says he was taken to a hospital and “released from ICE custody” on July 22 — then died at an unspecified later date. ICE did not publicly report his death, citing its new policy that it is “not responsible when an individual passes away weeks after leaving their custody.”
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez, who disclosed Chajon-Raxon’s death after an oversight visit to Delaney Hall, called the policy change a “loophole” that allows ICE to “release someone from its custody and then claim it has no responsibility to investigate their death or inform Congress and the public.”
The Breakdown
- A medical journal study found the ICE detainee death rate climbed from 13 per 100,000 person-years in fiscal 2023 to 47.5 per 100,000 in fiscal 2024, then spiked to 88.9 per 100,000 in the first three and a half months of the current fiscal year — the highest rate in at least 22 years.
- Causes of death between fiscal 2021 and early 2026 included cardiovascular issues (18.5%), infectious causes including COVID-19 (13.8%), suicide (10.8%), neurologic causes (7.7%), and “other or undetermined” causes (49.2%).
- At least 10 people have died by suicide in ICE detention since Trump returned to office in January 2025, compared to one reported suicide death in all of 2024, according to an Associated Press investigation.
- The medical journal study found deaths concentrated in “facilities that are new and rapidly expanded,” and noted “very limited independent medical oversight and very inconsistent adherence to clinical standards” across detention sites.
- ICE changed its policy earlier this year to stop reporting deaths that occur within 30 days of someone’s release from custody, reversing a 2021 Biden-era transparency measure.
- The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog has launched two reviews: one investigating the increase in deaths amid the rising detainee population, another examining whether detention centers are following use-of-force standards during interactions with detainees.
What This Means for You
When detention capacity expands this rapidly, when medical oversight is described by researchers as “very limited,” families say their loved ones didn’t get the care they needed before they died. The federal government says detainees receive comprehensive care and that “for many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.” Medical experts and families say people are dying of treatable conditions, misdiagnoses, and delayed care.
What to Watch
The Department of Homeland Security maintains there has been “NO spike in deaths,” citing a death rate of 0.009% of the detained population as of late May and insisting that “as bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens.”
But a peer-reviewed medical journal found the death rate per 100,000 person-years increased more than sixfold in less than three years. That’s not a rounding error — that’s a pattern. And it raises a real question: when a federal agency’s own watchdog is launching reviews into whether detention centers are following medical and use-of-force standards, why should a voter take the agency’s assurances at face value?
There’s also this: the largest category of deaths — nearly half — are classified as “other or undetermined.” Dr. Sanjay Basu, co-author of the medical journal study, told TIME that “to have almost half of these deaths in a system that can’t be classified into a standard clinical category is extremely unusual from a medical perspective.” It suggests, he said, “something very wrong with the monitoring and the reporting infrastructure itself.”
That’s not a fringe accusation. That’s a medical researcher looking at the government’s own data and saying the system can’t explain what’s killing the people in its care. If ICE can’t or won’t categorize how someone died, how can it claim the care was adequate?
Finally, the policy change itself deserves scrutiny. ICE now says it won’t report a death if the person was released from custody beforehand — even if that release happened days before. Chajon-Raxon had a seizure July 19, was released July 22, and died sometime after — ICE won’t say when. His case only became public because a congressman disclosed it during an oversight visit.
