By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — January 26, 2026

Overview

Since January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump began his second term as president of the United States, U.S. immigration enforcement has entered a markedly more aggressive phase. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), operating under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has expanded detention, accelerated removals, and increased interior enforcement operations.

What has not expanded in parallel is transparency.

There is no single, official, publicly accessible federal record that tallies how many people have died either in ICE custody or as a direct result of encounters with ICE officers or other DHS immigration personnel. What follows is an archival accounting of documented minimums based on publicly reported data, official statements, and verified investigative journalism.

Terminology and Scope

ICE personnel are officially designated as deportation officers (Enforcement and Removal Operations, ERO) or special agents (Homeland Security Investigations, HSI). The term “operative” is not used in statute or agency guidance. In this article, “ICE officers” refers to personnel operating under ICE authority; where incidents involve other DHS components, that distinction is made explicitly.

This review separates fatalities into two analytically distinct categories:

  1. Deaths in ICE custody (detention-related deaths).
  2. Fatal encounters during enforcement operations (including shootings involving ICE or other DHS immigration officers).

Deaths in ICE Custody

Available reporting indicates that calendar year 2025 recorded the highest number of deaths in ICE custody in at least two decades. Depending on methodology and reporting cutoffs, major outlets documented between 30 and 32 deaths in ICE detention facilities during 2025 alone.

These deaths occurred across multiple facilities and involved a range of causes, including medical neglect, delayed treatment, suicide, and acute illness. In early January 2026, additional deaths were reported within the first weeks of the year, indicating that the trend did not abate with the calendar change.

Notably, at least one ICE detention death in January 2026 — the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos — was ruled a homicide by a county medical examiner, underscoring the severity of conditions inside certain facilities.

As of late January 2026, congressional correspondence and press reporting indicate at least 36 deaths in ICE custody since the start of the second Trump administration. This figure should be understood as a minimum confirmed total rather than a comprehensive accounting.

Fatal Encounters During Enforcement Operations

Unlike deaths in custody, fatal shootings and other lethal encounters during immigration enforcement operations are not centrally tracked by ICE or DHS in a public database. Documentation therefore relies on case-by-case reporting.

Verified reporting since January 20, 2025 confirms at least six fatal shootings involving federal immigration officers, including ICE and other DHS components such as Border Patrol operating in interior enforcement roles.

Among the most prominent cases:

  • Renée Good — killed on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer; the death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.
  • Alex Pretti — a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse killed on January 24, 2026, during a DHS immigration operation in Minneapolis.
  • Silverio Villegas González — killed in September 2025 during an ICE traffic stop in Illinois.

Investigative outlets reviewing national reporting have identified additional fatal shootings tied to immigration enforcement during this period, bringing the documented minimum total to at least six deaths. Because DHS frequently conducts joint operations and does not publish a unified use-of-force fatality log, the true number may be higher.

What Can — and Cannot — Be Claimed

Based on verifiable public information as of January 26, 2026:

  • Deaths in ICE custody since January 20, 2025: At least 36 documented deaths.
  • Fatal shootings during immigration enforcement operations: At least six documented deaths.

These numbers cannot be responsibly combined into a single total without clarification, as they represent distinct mechanisms of harm and are tracked through different reporting channels.

What can be stated with confidence is that dozens of people have died under U.S. immigration enforcement authority during the first year of the second Trump administration, and that existing federal transparency mechanisms are insufficient to provide the public with a definitive, real-time accounting.

Structural Transparency Gap

The absence of a consolidated fatality reporting system for ICE and DHS immigration operations is not a technical oversight. It reflects a long-standing structural gap in federal accountability, one that makes independent archival work necessary and inherently conservative in its conclusions.

Every figure presented here represents a documented floor, not a ceiling.

References

Axios. (2026). Reporting on ICE custody deaths and trend comparisons.
House Committee on Homeland Security (Democratic Staff). (2026). Congressional correspondence regarding ICE and CBP deaths in custody.
Reuters. (2025–2026). Reporting on deaths in ICE custody and related enforcement activity.
The Guardian. (2025–2026). Reporting on ICE custody deaths and federal agent-involved shootings.
The Marshall Project. (2026). Reporting on federal immigration officer shootings and interior enforcement actions.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (2025–2026). Public-facing program pages and career role descriptions.

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