By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — November 2, 2026
Context
On November 3, 2026, voters in the United States will participate in the country’s general election, selecting members of Congress, governors, state officials, and local leaders. While not a presidential election year, the 2026 midterm elections carry significant implications for governance, institutional oversight, and the balance of power during the remainder of the current presidential term.
This analysis is written from outside the continental United States. The author is a citizen of the United States, and therefore retains the full civic and constitutional right to observe, analyze, and comment on U.S. elections and the conduct of U.S. government institutions, regardless of physical location.
Midterm elections often function as referenda on executive authority and public trust. In the current environment, they also frame questions about the legitimacy, transparency, and domestic role of federal enforcement agencies operating under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The First Question: How Many People Have Died Under DHS Authority?
A foundational question confronts any serious evaluation of a security institution: how many people have died under its authority?
In the case of DHS, there is no clear, consolidated, public answer. DHS does not publish a single department-wide accounting of deaths attributable to DHS operations across its components. Mortality data appear in fragmented and inconsistent forms across agencies and reporting frameworks.
What can be established from available public reporting is partial and category-limited:
- Deaths in ICE detention: Public reporting and tracking indicate 32 deaths in ICE custody during calendar year 2025, widely described as the highest annual total in decades.
- Deaths involving street enforcement or raids: Independent reporting has documented fatal shootings and other lethal incidents linked to immigration enforcement actions, but there is no complete official series that aggregates those deaths across time, locations, and joint-task-force operations.
- Deaths “related to” CBP: CBP publishes “CBP-related deaths” reports, but those categories are broader than agent-caused killings and are not directly comparable to ICE’s detention-only reporting.
These categories are not interchangeable. They cannot be reliably combined into a single “DHS deaths” total without a standardized definition and consolidated reporting that DHS does not currently provide.
From an archival perspective, that absence is itself a material fact: the United States maintains a powerful domestic security department that cannot be evaluated through a unified, transparent accounting of deaths under its authority.
ICE and the Question of Responsibility for Deaths
A narrower question is still difficult to answer cleanly: How many people has ICE been responsible for killing?
Available data again break into categories:
- Detention deaths (in custody): The most consistently tracked figure is deaths that occur in ICE detention custody. Public reporting places 2025 at 32 deaths.
- Field enforcement deaths (arrests, raids, operations): Independent investigations have documented lethal incidents during immigration enforcement actions, but note the lack of complete and timely federal data on use-of-force incidents and outcomes.
- Early 2026 incidents: Public reporting has described multiple deaths linked to immigration enforcement activity in early 2026, including high-profile fatal shootings in Minneapolis during a federal enforcement surge.
Even when individual events are widely reported, a comprehensive national total is not produced in a single official ICE series that merges detention deaths and street-enforcement deaths into one public number.
For an institution with detention authority and armed enforcement capacity, that limitation makes accountability assessment significantly harder than it would be under a unified reporting regime.
Transparency as a Legitimacy Test
The inability to produce a consolidated number is not only an administrative gap. It affects institutional legitimacy.
A security institution operating within a democratic constitutional system is expected to:
- maintain clear and consistent definitions for deaths tied to its authority,
- publish comparable data over time,
- and enable independent oversight that is not dependent on scattered media accounts.
When deaths are only visible through separate, non-comparable reporting channels—or through external tracking—an agency’s claim to public legitimacy weakens. This is not an argument that the United States lacks enforcement capacity. It is an argument that democratic accountability requires baseline transparency, especially where loss of life is concerned.
The Domestic Role of ICE Under the Current Presidency
Within DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has assumed an increasingly central role in domestic policy enforcement. Under the administration of Donald J. Trump, the 47th President of the United States, immigration enforcement has been treated as a major executive priority, with operations that have received heightened national political attention.
In Democratic-led states and cities, enforcement surges and high-visibility operations have intensified public debate about the boundary between neutral enforcement and politically driven domestic deployment. Recent reporting on Minneapolis has described federal enforcement actions that drew protests, litigation pressure, and national political reaction after fatal shootings involving immigration enforcement personnel.
Critics and some observers have described ICE in this environment as functioning like a de facto “Praetorian guard” for presidential domestic priorities—meaning a politically salient enforcement instrument used to impose executive policy preferences in contested jurisdictions. This characterization is contested, but it has entered public discourse as lethal incidents and oversight disputes continue to receive national attention.
Elections, Oversight, and the 2026 Inflection Point
Elections do not directly reform agencies. However, they determine the composition of Congress, which controls oversight authority, statutory reform, and appropriations.
For DHS and its components, electoral outcomes influence:
- the scope and intensity of oversight hearings,
- statutory transparency requirements,
- budgetary constraints,
- and the legal boundaries placed on domestic enforcement activity.
The current presidential term is scheduled to continue until January 20, 2029, which increases the practical importance of midterm oversight for any near-term institutional correction. (Under the U.S. Constitution and federal practice, presidential terms end at noon on January 20 following an election year.)
From an archival standpoint, November 2026 functions as a boundary line: it marks the political conditions under which DHS transparency and ICE’s domestic operational posture will be constrained, normalized, or expanded through the remainder of the term.
References (APA)
The Guardian. (2026, January 4). 2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline
Axios. (2026, January 20). Immigrant detention deaths reach 20-year high under Trump. Axios. https://www.axios.com/2026/01/20/ice-custody-deaths-trump-surge
Washington Office on Latin America. (2026, January). U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Detention deaths, DHS appropriations, ICE warrants, December data. WOLA. https://www.wola.org/2026/01/u-s-mexico-border-update-detention-deaths-dhs-appropriations-ice-warrants-december-data/
The Trace. (2025, December 8). How many people have been shot in ICE raids? The Trace. https://www.thetrace.org/2025/12/immigration-ice-shootings-guns-tracker/
Reuters. (2026, January 25). Deaths mount as Trump immigration push intensifies. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/deaths-mount-trump-immigration-push-intensifies-2026-01-25/
Reuters. (2026, January 27). U.S. judge threatens ICE chief with contempt, orders court appearance. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-threatens-ice-chief-with-contempt-orders-court-appearance-2026-01-27/
CBS News. (2026, January 28). New details released in Alex Pretti shooting amid federal immigration leadership changes. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/dhs-secretary-kristi-noem-under-scrutiny-bovino-exits-minnesota-after-alex-pretti-killing/
The Guardian. (2026, January 27). Biden condemns “our own government targeting” US citizens in Minneapolis. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/27/biden-minnesota-minneapolis-ice-shooting-reaction
U.S. Congress. (2002). Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107–296, 116 Stat. 2135.
U.S. Constitution, amend. I; amend. XV; amend. XIX; amend. XXVI; amend. XX.
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