Death rate in immigration detention has reached a 22-year-high, raising physicians' concerns

ImmigrationDeath rate in immigration detention has reached a 22-year-high, raising physicians' concernsA report in the medical journal JAMA said the most recent spike in deaths took place in a system with “longstanding failures” that were compounded by Trump administration policies.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Detainees wait to be processed inside an immigration detention facility in Texas 2007.Paul J. Richards / AFP via Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 16, 2026, 11:02 AM EDTBy Daniella SilvaPhysicians said Thursday that new research on deaths in ICE custody showed that “systemic weakness” in medical care at the agency has become more serious in the past two decades. Meanwhile, the number of people in immigration detention has soared and conditions have worsened during the Trump administration, with the death rate during part of this fiscal year reaching a 22-year high based on information starting in 2004. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The research, published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA, looked at the mortality rate of detainees in ICE custody from fiscal year 2004 through Jan. 19 this year. The fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 of each year and ends on Sept. 30 of the following year.The authors found a total of 18 deaths from last October through Jan. 19, an annualized death rate of 88.9 people per 100,000 using the average daily population in custody for that fiscal year. Ten more people have died in ICE custody this year since then. The researchers found that after a high of an annualized death rate of 127.7 people per 100,000 using the average daily population in custody for fiscal year 2004, the rates of deaths in ICE custody decreased until 2020, when there was a spike during the first year of the Covid pandemic. The death rate dropped sharply again after that before it climbed increasingly since fiscal year 2024. As immigrant deaths in custody ri...