Seven people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in December alone, making it the deadliest month for immigrants in ICE custody since Trump returned to the White House—capping off what was already the deadliest year since 2004.

THE DETAILS: Four of those deaths occurred within just four days of each other. The dead include:

• Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan man who died at Camp East Montana in Texas—a facility that has reportedly already violated dozens of federal detention standards since opening in August.
• Jean Wilson Brutus, a 41-year-old Haitian man who died at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where detainees previously said they were being starved.
• And Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan man who was found unresponsive without a pulse on December 4—one day before he was scheduled to be deported—and declared dead ten days later.

OF COURSE: ICE’s official “Detainee Death Reporting” webpage lists only 15 deaths for 2025. But according to NPR, at least 20 immigrants had already died in custody by October.

The agency is required to publish death notices within 30 days, but apparently accurate record-keeping isn’t a priority when you’re running what increasingly looks like a death trap.

ZOOM OUT: This is what Trump’s immigration war actually looks like. Not “securing the border”—people dying in facilities that violate federal standards, at centers where detainees report being starved, in a system that can’t even keep track of its own body count.

Three of December’s deaths occurred at Texas facilities. Multiple deaths are still under investigation. The common thread? A detention apparatus expanding rapidly under an administration that views cruelty as a feature, not a bug.

WHY IT MATTERS: These aren’t statistics—they’re human beings who entered U.S. custody alive and left in body bags.

When your immigration enforcement system kills more people in custody than any year in two decades, you’re not running border security. You’re running a system where death is an acceptable outcome.