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.
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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.
Ramos-Solano’s family has demanded answers regarding the circumstances of his death. As L.A. TACO, a local outlet, reported, detainees at Adelanto alleged to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center that Ramos-Solano had described having trouble breathing and feeling overheated. The detainees also alleged “that medical staff did not respond to their calls until Ramos-Solano was already unresponsive,” L.A. TACO reported. DHS has said that security alerted medical staff immediately when Ramos-Solano was discovered to be unconscious.
“What happened to my dad was very inhumane,” his daughter Gloria Ramos told reporters on Monday. “I think my family and I deserve to know the truth of what happened to my dad.”
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Ramos-Solano’s death, and those of other Mexican nationals, have prompted Mexican officials to ramp up their protests of how the country’s citizens have been treated in immigration detention.
At the Adelanto facility, where Ramos-Solano died, staff, attorneys and lawmakers previously told The Los Angeles Times that detainees slept on the floor without blankets or pillows, and went days without clean clothing and underwear. Additionally, attorneys said that detainees also experienced medical neglect, citing one person who wasn’t given high blood pressure pills his family tried to bring for him.
Similar issues have been raised at other detention sites, including Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, where detainees reported a lack of water and medical attention, and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, where detainees have reported problems with moldy food and packed living areas.
Additionally, the number of people in detention has increased significantly under the Trump administration, leading to overcrowding that’s reportedly added to existing problems. In mid-January, there were more than 70,000 people in federal detention, marking an 84% increase from the same time the prior year.
ABC News’s analysis specifically calculated mortality rates to examine whether the spikes in deaths surpassed expected upticks tied to the increase in detention admissions. Those analyses found that 3.76 people died per 100,000 admissions in 2024 compared to 7.16 people per 100,000 admissions in 2025.
“ICE is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments,” DHS claimed in its Monday release. “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout their stay.”
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a JS request for comment.
