“Since January 1, 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reported that 68 folks have died in its custody. This quantity doesn’t embrace detained individuals who ICE launched instantly previous to their deaths, which ICE has admitted reduces the variety of reported deaths, and permits the company to keep away from accountability necessities.[1] These deaths elevate critical concern about continued, systemic issues with medical and psychological well being care offered in immigration detention amenities, and the absence of accountability or penalties confronted by amenities the place detained folks have died. ICE at the moment detains, on common, roughly 38,000 folks every day in a community of roughly 130 detention amenities nationwide. Congress, nonetheless, lately elevated ICE’s price range to detain 41,500 folks every day for FY 2024, at a price of $3.4 billion.[2]
This report, a joint undertaking of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and American Oversight, supplies a complete examination of the deaths of 52 folks whom ICE reported to have died in its custody between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2021. Our evaluation relies on a overview of over 14,500 pages of paperwork obtained from the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) and ICE by means of Freedom of Info Act (FOIA) requests; from native authorities businesses by means of state public file act requests; and from civil litigation. Report evaluation additionally incorporates the overview of ICE’s personal investigatory reviews into deaths in custody by impartial medical specialists, in addition to interviews with two members of the family of people that died in ICE detention throughout the studied interval.
Lethal Failures exposes the methods wherein the Division of Homeland Safety’s (DHS) inside oversight mechanisms have did not conduct rigorous investigations, impose significant penalties, or enhance situations that trigger immigrants to die in ICE detention. Primarily based on impartial medical knowledgeable evaluations of deaths, the report additional examines the methods wherein systemic failures in medical and psychological well being care in ICE detention have brought about in any other case preventable deaths.”
