ICE Detention Deaths: Reviews Fault Medical Care in 23 Cases

ICE detention deaths are now documented in the agency’s own words: internal reviews of 29 people who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody between January 2025 and January 2026 found deficient medical care in 23 of the cases, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which obtained the reports. The findings, relayed by The New Republic on Nov. 6, matter for detainees and their families, for attorneys weighing wrongful-death claims, and for a Congress that will soon write ICE’s next budget with a new majority in the House.

What sets these documents apart from earlier criticism is who wrote them. Advocacy groups and congressional Democrats have accused ICE of medical neglect for years, and the agency has disputed those accounts. Here, the conclusions come from ICE’s own investigators, who wrote that staff “deviated from safe limits of practice” or “did not provide medical care within safe limits of practice,” according to the reporting. In at least eight cases, The New Republic reported, medical staff failed to perform CPR correctly or did not perform it at all. Investigators concluded in only three cases that the deficient care did not directly contribute to the death.

The New Republic’s account quotes no ICE response to the reviews, and it reported that the agency continues to maintain there has been no spike in detainee deaths. A separate count by the National Immigration Project, an immigrant-rights legal organization, puts deaths in ICE detention at 31 so far in 2026, the magazine reported. That tally comes from an advocacy group, not from ICE.

Why ICE detention deaths are harder to check now

The reviews reached the public through a newspaper, not through ICE’s own disclosures. ICE’s own death-reporting page says that 2018 DHS appropriations language obligates the agency to make public “all reports regarding in custody deaths within 90 days,” and that it posts a news release within two business days of a death. Whether the internal reviews the Chronicle obtained fall within that requirement, and why they had to be pried loose, is a fair question for oversight committees.

The timing also lines up with a sharp drop in outside scrutiny. A Government Accountability Office report released Nov. 5 found that ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight conducted 102 inspections in fiscal 2025, down from 194 in fiscal 2024, while the average daily detained population rose from 40,587 in April 2025 to 61,817 in April 2026. GAO also noted that an appropriations rule barring ICE from keeping contracts with facilities that twice failed inspections was dropped from the fiscal 2026 spending law. As a closer look at the GAO inspection findings noted, DHS argued that the raw inspection count overstates the cut because many fiscal 2024 visits were follow-ups.

Put together, the practical effect is that a much larger detention system is being watched by fewer inspectors, and the clearest evidence of medical failure came from documents ICE did not volunteer. That combination tends to draw legislative attention, as it already has in a senator’s inquiry into a two-hour hospital gap before one detainee’s death.

What the reviews could mean in court and in Congress

For families and their lawyers, an agency’s own finding that care fell below safe practice is the kind of record that can shape a wrongful-death claim. Claims against the federal government run through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which requires an administrative claim to the agency within two years before any lawsuit. One complication is structural: many detainees are held in privately run or county facilities, and the FTCA does not cover independent contractors, so liability may turn on who employed the medical staff in each case.

For Congress, the likelier lever is money. Restoring the contract rule GAO described, or tying detention funds to timely publication of death reviews, would take a line in the next DHS spending bill, though any bill still needs the president’s signature. Committee subpoenas are another route; Democrats taking over the House have signaled they intend to use them, which raises the question of what a House panel can compel from ICE. Fights over physical access, such as lawmakers turned away from a Kern County facility and the appeals court case over oversight visits, suggest ICE will contest broader document demands.

For people now in custody, including those with pending asylum, green card or bond cases, nothing in the reviews changes the legal rules of detention. The open question is whether ICE adjusts its medical staffing, emergency-response training or contractor oversight in response to its own investigators, and whether it publishes the remaining reviews for deaths after January 2026.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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