14 Lives Lost Behind Bars: Migrants Died in ICE Custody During Trump’s First Year

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Since 2019, 69 migrants have died while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since Donald Trump won the election in November 2024 alone, 14 people have died in ICE facilities, three of them Mexican.

Only 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term as president, surpasses the beginning of his second. In that fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30, 21 migrants whom U.S. authorities should have protected died.

There are more than 200 migrant detention centers across the United States. These include public and private prisons, which currently hold 61,000 people, almost double the 37,000 when Trump returned to power. Seventy percent of those detained have not been sentenced, and of those who have been convicted, a significant number are for minor offenses such as violating traffic rules.

It can’t be said that Trump isn’t keeping his promises. One of the pillars of his electoral platform was to offer an iron-fisted policy against immigration. “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America,” he declared in his closing campaign. As soon as he took office, he signed an executive order declaring the border with Mexico a national emergency; I have closed entry to U.S. territory to asylum seekers, announced a physical wall again, and sent law enforcement officers to act as a human barrier; he ordered the detention of all undocumented migrants and the filing of criminal charges against them, in addition to seeking a legal path to strip their children of their birthright citizenship.

Since then, human hunting season has been declared. ICE agents patrol areas near schools and workplaces across the country looking for victims; there have been raids against day laborers while they were harvesting crops in American fields, during one of which a Mexican worker was killed; federal operations have been announced in cities and jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with these policies.

The list is too long, but the irony was served last June, when Trump acknowledged that mass deportations were affecting sectors like agriculture and hospitality, which depend precisely on migrant labor.

“Trump is on the other side of the wall, but U.S. immigration policies have been exported to Latin America for 30 years by blackmailing governments of all political persuasions,” reflects Varela. Mexico, one of the busiest migrant corridors on the planet, crossed by thousands of people from all over the world seeking to reach the United States, is no exception.

In the United States, every time a migrant dies in an ICE detention center, the agency issues a statement. They all end with the same paragraph: “ICE remains committed to ensuring that all persons in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments.”