In 2025, at least 32 people died while in detainment by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That grim figure technically matches the record high number for detainee deaths that was set 21 years earlier in 2004, amid President George W. Bush’s own deportation push, but I can’t help but suspect that the true number is actually even higher. After all, I can immediately think of cases that aren’t included in that figure, such as the disappearance of Los Angeles resident Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who multiple witnesses say was taken into ICE custody before suffering a medical emergency, only to vanish off the face of the Earth. Months later, he’s never been found, and the official stance of DHS is that they never detained anyone by that name, despite fellow detainees saying that Ventura Aguilar was there. Which begs the question: How many more people who may be alive or dead have slipped through the cracks (or been hidden) from ICE’s reporting? How many people have truly died in ICE custody? And will 2026’s death figures blow 2025 out of the water? If the first three weeks of the year are any indication, the answer is yes.
In just three weeks since the start of 2026, there have officially been six deaths of detainees in ICE custody, per the official reporting mechanism of DHS’s newsroom, which puts out a press release on each death. That follows December, which was the deadliest month of 2025, in which 7 detainees–and might I remind you, we are talking about human beings here, 74% of which have no criminal convictions–died in ICE custody. This is obviously a small sample size, but if you extrapolate the pace of deaths for the last two months, it would make for more than 80 ICE detainee deaths in 2026, more than double the previous all-time record. Regardless of anything else, it’s clear that more people are dying as of late in ICE custody. And the individual circumstances of those deaths? Well, they’re terrifying as well.
Case in point: Last week we wrote about the disturbing death of a Cuban detainee in Texas named Geraldo Lunas Campos. This one was notable, as there was a minor media rush revolving around the fact that the local medical examiner had reportedly told the family of Campos, following the death, that the means of death was asphyxiation, and that the death would likely be ruled a homicide. That’s exactly what has now happened: The autopsy report from the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office listed the death as a homicide, saying that not only did the body shows signs of a struggle, including abrasions to the chest and knees, “he also had hemorrhages on his neck” and examination of petechiae in the eyes affirms that the cause of death was like “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” At the same time, an on-the-record witness and fellow detainee at the camp told the Associated Press that he witnessed five guards choking Geraldo Lunas Campos into submission. If that’s true, there’s not much else you can call this but murder by ICE, with the medical examiner’s office effectively laying the charge. If the death is “homicide,” then someone logically needs to have perpetrated said homicide, yes?
ICYMI: “Flores said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, “No puedo respirar” — Spanish for “I can’t breathe.”
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) Jan 17, 2026 at 9:42 AM
DHS, meanwhile, has flip-flopped on the circumstances of Geraldo Lunas Campos’ death in their statements. Before anything about “homicide” had hit the newspapers, DHS reported the death like any other, saying with extreme vagueness in its press release that “earlier that day, Lunas became disruptive while in line for medication and refused to return to his assigned dorm,” causing guards to place him “in segregation.” While in segregation, “staff observed him in distress and contacted on-site medical personnel for assistance.” Only after news reports began to emerge about the potential classification of homicide did the DHS story suddenly change: Now spokesperson and professional liar Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Campos was in fact in the midst of trying to commit suicide, while ICE personnel attempted to stop him. ZERO further details or explanations about this supposed suicide attempt have subsequently been furnished by DHS, nor was anything about suicide mentioned in the original press release. Literally all we have is the following line from McLaughlin: “Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life. During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness.” How exactly was this man supposed to have managed to choke himself to death while being restrained by five immigration/detention agents?
DHS has not responded to other media inquiry into the death of Campos, instead falling back reflexively on pointing out his long (and unrelated to this matter) criminal history, which does include prior prison stints and a conviction for “sexual contact with a child under 11” in 2003. They are quite clearly hoping that because Campos was undeniably a criminal, that no one will risk the political cache to stand up for the wrongful death of a man in a case that the medical examiner has now labeled a homicide. A dangerous precedent could be set in the process: Does ICE have free rein to kill any detainee they want, as long as that person has previously been convicted of serious crimes? If not held accountable in cases like this, what reason is there to not allow more instances of this to happen?
In particular, certain sites where detainees are being kept are earning notorious reputations as places where deaths seem to follow. Geraldo Lunas Campos had been detained at Camp East Montana, a makeshift tent facility within the Texas military base of Fort Bliss, near the Mexican border at El Paso. That site has been linked to several deaths in both 2025 and 2026. For instance, it housed 48-year-old Guatemalan native Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a man described in good health who had run a plant nursery outside of Miami with his wife Lucía Pedro Juan for more than a decade. Separated when both were arrested, Lucía Pedro Juan spent three months in ICE detainment and was deported to Guatemala. Francisco Gaspar-Andrés was not so lucky: At Camp East Montana, which the American Civil Liberties Union has called a “human and civil rights catastrophe,” his health rapidly declined and he was reportedly treated for jaundice and hypertension, which he had never displayed before. He was transferred to a hospital in November and died in December due to suspected kidney and liver failure.
Only 11 days after Campos’ Jan. 3, 2026 death at Camp East Montana, meanwhile, another detainee also died at the facility. DHS announced in its press release that Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old from Nicaragua who had been arrested as part of the ongoing ICE purge of Minneapolis, had been found “unconscious and unresponsive in his room. He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation.”
Suicide is certainly a possibility and a threat in detainment; it would be disingenuous to act otherwise. However, the Associated Press reports that unlike it did with the deaths of Campos and Gaspar-Andrés, the body of Victor Manuel Diaz was not sent to the same county medical examiner in El Paso–you know, the office that just ruled Campos’ death a homicide. Instead, “McLaughlin said Wednesday that the autopsy for Diaz is being performed at the Army medical center at Fort Bliss. DHS again did not respond to questions about whether any agency other than ICE will investigate the death.” What can you make of that, other than to call it SUSPICIOUS AS FUCK that ICE suddenly doesn’t want to send any more dead bodies to the same medical examiner who just ruled one of the deaths at the facility a homicide? Now they need their own medical examiners, people whose reports they can control, for every death in custody? What move could they make that would possibly be more suspicious than this?
“DHS must preserve all evidence, including halting their effort to deport the witnesses,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar of the U.S. House of Representatives, whose district includes El Paso, saying that Congress needs to be briefed about the deaths at Camp East Montana. “I reiterate my call for Camp East Montana to be shut down and for the contract with the corporation running it to be terminated.”
Victor Manuel Diaz was the sixth in-custody death that ICE has reported so far in 2026. He was at least the third person to die at Camp East Montana, which opened just five months ago.
DHS is reporting his death as a "presumed suicide," but DHS is, of course, not to be trusted. 2/3
— Boycott Citizens (@boycottcitizens.bsky.social) Jan 18, 2026 at 12:42 PM
DHS and ICE are indeed required by law to issue longer, more detailed reports to Congress on each detainee who dies while in custody, within 90 days of the event, which are publicly available via the government website. Only here’s the thing: Within the last month, ICE has apparently and suddenly stopped issuing those reports, having missed the deadline of when they were legally obligated to publish the report on the death of Chinese national Huabing Xie, who according to ICE died in custody on Sept. 29, 2025. As of today, it’s been 115 days since the death of Xie, and the site has not been updated. That’s not even the only one; ICE also hasn’t issued a full report on 34-year-old Leo Cruz-Silva, who died in a Missouri jail on Oct. 4, 2025. It’s been 110 days since that one. The law, as stated on ICE’s own website, is “Congressional requirements in the DHS Appropriations Bill (2018) obligate ICE to make public all reports regarding in custody deaths within 90 days.”
Has ICE simply stopped bothering to follow this law, in defiance of Congress? Is this like when the Trump administration just randomly seemed to stop reuniting immigrant children with their families in November, where they were seemingly just hoping no one would notice or care? Is anyone in Congress paying the least bit of attention to Immigration and Customs Enforcement deciding to just not bother reporting on detainee deaths? When will they simply stop even bothering to put out the press releases, and would Congress do anything about that?
And on the deepest and most profound level, how many detainees will have to die in ICE custody in 2026 for Americans to acknowledge that there’s something deeply wrong happening here?
