ICE Stops Reporting Deaths of Recently Released Detainees
A canceled policy put in place during the administration of President Joe Biden (D) required the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to file a report if a former detainee died within 30 days of being released from custody. This policy shift, which the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, described as “common sense,” comes amid increasing scrutiny over immigrant deaths at the agency’s detention centers.
Since 2025, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, at least 48 people have died in ICE custody, reaching a record high last year. Many of these deaths appear to have been preventable. And while the deaths of ICE detainees is not a new issue, the removal of the reporting rule will likely lead to decreased transparency and accountability for an agency that was already limited in both.
As the Washington Post reported, the policy was designed to prevent ICE from releasing severely ill detainees to avoid recording an in-custody death. With this policy now removed, “ICE can basically release people on their deathbed and then not have to worry about having to do any investigations,” National Immigration Project attorney Khaled Alrabe said in a lawsuit filed on behalf of an ICE detainee who died after contracting COVID-19 while in custody. “Even when the situation … was a result of the conditions of detention.”
Beyond the policy shift making it easier for ICE to distance itself from detainee deaths, the agency also has a record of haphazardly releasing detainees in dangerous conditions. In February of this year, the body of a nearly blind refugee from Myanmar, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, 56, was found five days after ICE dropped him off at a coffee shop in Buffalo, New York. One month later, Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, was found dead of hypothermia at a Pittsburgh bus stop three days after ICE released her 30 miles from her home. Both Michel and Alam’s deaths were ruled as homicides by medical examiners.
Sources: Mother Jones, CNN, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle
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