A staggering number of people have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention during President Donald Trump’s second term, deepening concerns about poor conditions and medical care at federal facilities across the country.
According to an analysis by ABC News, the first 14 months of Trump’s second term have been among the deadliest for the federal detention system in recent years. As of this week, there’s been a total of 47 deaths in federal custody, including 33 in 2025 and 14 in the first three months of 2026, per The New York Times. (The 2025 figure includes two people who were killed when a gunman opened fire on a Dallas ICE detention facility last September.)
That’s compared to 11 deaths in ICE custody in 2024, seven deaths in 2023, and three deaths in 2022, according to NPR. Previously, deaths also surged in 2020, when the pandemic contributed to a spike in fatalities.
On Monday, DHS announced that Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano had died on March 25, though the agency did not specify the cause. Ramos-Solano was found unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Southern California and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. He had multiple medical conditions, including diabetes and hypertension, according to DHS, which claimed that he received consistent care for them.
