ICE deaths – A new report from Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights documents 52 deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody over 500 days since President Donald Trump returned to office, arguing that failures in medical care and rising detention pr
Flowers left at a fence outside Krome Detention Center in Miami last year were meant to honor people who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Behind those tributes is a grim question that watchdogs say is getting worse under Trump: whether more detainees are dying. and whether preventable medical failures are playing a central role.
In February 2025, Maksym Chernyak—an immigrant from Ukraine and 44 years old—suffered a medical emergency in ICE custody in Florida. The warning signs, the report says, were there: multiple indicators that he was having a severe stroke. But ICE’s medical personnel missed them. By the time 911 was called, it was too late. Chernyak’s systolic blood pressure was more than 280 when he arrived at the hospital, and he died soon after.
Chernyak is one of 52 people who died in ICE custody during the 500 days after President Donald Trump returned to office. A new analysis released Thursday by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights argues that ICE’s mistakes “almost certainly” cost Chernyak his life—and that he was far from alone. The report ties the deterioration to medical care that watchdogs describe as abysmal. alongside a rise in the number of people held.
Its core finding is stark. The mortality rate for people in ICE custody has “skyrocketed” during Trump’s second-term mass-deportation campaign, the groups say. It is nearly three times what it was during Joe Biden’s presidency. The report also finds it is about two times higher than during Trump’s first term. when the period covered the first 10 months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report blends statistics with detailed reviews of specific deaths. Physicians for Human Rights. which investigates allegations of abuse through medical experts worldwide. identified a “high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care” in several deaths. Those cases, the report says, raised “serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.”.
Reagan Williams. a researcher in the Crisis. Conflict. and Arms division at Human Rights Watch. said the recommendations should include both better medical care inside detention and fewer people held there to prevent overcrowding. Ending mandatory detention, she argued, could help. Under the current policy—described as the subject of an ongoing legal battle—people who entered the country without inspection face mandatory detention regardless of criminal history or how long they have lived in the United States. In the past. including during Trump’s first term. the policy covered people who would have been eligible for bond hearings and could be released as their immigration cases proceeded.
While the report presses for broader oversight. the immediate attention it has drawn has also prompted scrutiny from within the federal system. NBC News reported on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is launching a review of the increase in deaths in ICE detention centers. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Williams said HRW and Physicians for Human Rights are also asking Congress to require detailed independent reviews of deaths in ICE custody. The watchdogs are calling for a new independent entity with authority and jurisdiction over the quality of medical services provided to people in detention.
The report’s most harrowing details center on moments before deaths—how medical decisions were made, what was observed, and what was delayed.
In Chernyak’s case. the report describes warning signs that ICE’s medical staff noted while he was at the detention center: he was unresponsive and had “dilated equal but nonreactive pupils. ” along with “seizure-like” activity. Dr. Katherine Peeler. a PHR medical adviser and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard. told me Chernyak’s case was “shocking” and said staff should have recognized signs consistent with potentially life-threatening brain swelling.
Despite that. Chernyak was recommended to be sent to an emergency room via “non-emergency. medical transport.” According to the report. about 30 minutes later—while he was still waiting—he began having “additional seizures. ” vomited. and his pupils became unequal and remained non-reactive. Medical staff then finally called 911. At the hospital, Peeler said, professionals immediately recognized he was suffering from what proved to be a fatal stroke.
The report also argues that conditions have deteriorated since Trump returned to office, but that the underlying problems were not new. The death of Serawit Gezahegn Dejene illustrates how long medical failures can unfold.
Dejene, a 45-year-old man from Ethiopia, died soon after January 29, 2025. He was first detained during the Biden administration in August 2024. According to information released by ICE, he began suffering from back pain around November 2024. Over a six-week stretch, he was evaluated four different times by medical staff at an Arizona detention center. On the last of those visits. after a nurse noted he had an “abnormal slow gait. ” he was given pain medication and instructions for spine exercises. with a follow-up recommendation in two weeks. He instead needed medical attention again just four days later.
This time. medical staff noted he had lost 20 percent of his body weight and sent him to a local emergency room. The emergency room returned him to the detention center with a diagnosis of “probable lymphoma.” Dejene’s condition deteriorated quickly. He was sent back to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Peeler said the autopsy revealed that Dejene had a number of conditions stemming from AIDS that had gone unnoticed by medical providers. The autopsy described “central nervous system toxoplasmosis. tuberculosis. Diphyllobothrium tapeworm. pneumocystis pneumonia. Klebsiella pneumoniae. Candida albicans. and Cytomegalovirus.” The report also notes that ICE’s detainee death report for Dejene states he denied having “any medical history.”.
“He was immunocompromised, which led him to have all these infections,” Peeler explained. “Which is how people used to die from AIDS. But people don’t typically die from AIDS in this country anymore because we have such effective antiretrovirals.” She added that ICE medical staff had multiple opportunities to potentially save Dejene’s life. “He must have looked sick,” she said. “There’s no way that he looked okay.”.
Peeler called the delays especially unforgivable. “This one I found really, really egregious,” she said. “It was over so many weeks. There were so many opportunities that he presented where they should have drawn labs.”
As the groups reviewed deaths, they found not only medical failures, but gaps in what families are told afterward.
Williams said she was struck by how little information is provided to people whose loved ones die in ICE custody. She described speaking with a mother who “was desperate to know more about what had happened to her son.”
When the report’s numbers are discussed, Williams said, they are too easily treated as abstract. “When we talk about a rising death rate,” she explained, “we’re talking about a mother losing her son who cooked for her, who cared for her, who she loves deeply, and who she is now suffering without.”
ICE detainee deaths Human Rights Watch Physicians for Human Rights Maksym Chernyak Serawit Gezahegn Dejene Krome Detention Center mandatory detention Department of Homeland Security inspector general independent reviews immigration enforcement