The Deaths ICE Doesn’t Count

Prisciliano Trejo Ricano spent his 29^th birthday on July 10 in Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center. In the privately-run facility that can hold about 1,900 detainees at a time, Trejo Ricano felt “like a number or like a placeholder.” Two days later, in a Facebook post from July 12, Trejo Ricano, who was born in Mexico, described his worsening medical symptoms. “I’ve been dealing with a bad sore throat, coughing blood in the morning and night and really bad migraines,” he wrote. He said he hadn’t received treatment or medication and told relatives he had a bruise that refused to heal. Asking for prayers, he continued, “This is truly the worst feeling of my life.”

A few days after Trejo Ricano posted on Facebook, his family in Durham, North Carolina, got news that he had been admitted to a hospital’s intensive care unit. There he was diagnosed with acute leukemia, a type of blood cancer. By the time ICE released Trejo Ricano from custody to be with his family, the 29-year-old was in a coma. He later passed away at the hospital on Friday, July 24. A fundraising page set up by a relative to cover medical and funeral costs describes Trejo Ricano as “a confident, funny, and outgoing person” who “dominated a room with jokes and was silly with everyone he met.”

But in the ever-growing tally of ICE detainee deaths—the number is now more than 50—Trejo Ricano’s name doesn’t appear. Advocates say that’s because he had already been released from the agency’s responsibility. That obfuscation of the detention death toll isn’t the result of any oversight in record-keeping. This summer, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy requiring ICE to report and investigate deaths that occurred within 30 days of someone being released. “ICE is returning to the standard practice of reporting deaths that occur while an individual is in agency custody,” said a memo from acting ICE director David Venturella first reported by the Washington Post.

The Department of Homeland Security told Newsweek that Trejo Ricano had been arrested and charged with driving while impaired and a hit-and-run. Durham County court records show charges for a June 19 DWI, leaving the scene with property damage, no operator’s license, and driving the wrong way on a one-way street. A law enforcement officer’s affidavit states that Trejo Ricano appeared to be asleep at the wheel and “smelled of alcohol.” He was later transferred to ICE. (DHS said Trejo Ricano was a “criminal illegal alien.”)

Trejo Ricano’s father said his son had been healthy, employed by a welding company, and going to the gym twice a week. He wanted to be a trainer. But during the three weeks he spent in detention in Georgia, his family said his health became progressively worse from when he first complained about feeling unwell on July 6. Then he went several days without adequate care. When the family finally was able to see him at the hospital, he had been intubated and could no longer communicate.

In an email, a DHS spokesperson repeated a statement shared with other publications saying Trejo Ricano had been “released from ICE custody on July 16, 2026, with an order of recognizance,” and that claims that he didn’t receive medical care were false. “He received medical screening when he was admitted to Stewart Detention Center,” the spokesperson said. “He also received medical care after complaining of a cough and sore throat.” The email also stated that Trejo Ricano tested negative for strep and received QC Mucus Relief Sinus for his cough. In addition, he was treated with a saline IV, Amoxicillin, Ibuprofen, and Tylenol. DHS described medical treatment offered to ICE detainees as “the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, 55 people have died in ICE detention, according to the agency’s own data. Twenty-two deaths happened in 2026 alone. The mortality rate of ICE detainees is at the highest level in more than a decade and four times that of the Biden presidency, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report documenting the increase in detention deaths.

The most recent recorded death on ICE’s website is that of Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man the agency said died on July 13 from a suspected cardiac arrest while being transferred from the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, to another facility. But on Monday, the agency issued a press release about another detainee death, reporting that Edwin Lopez-Cornejo from El Salvador “experienced a medical emergency” at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall before passing away.

Lopez-Cornejo had been in the United States for more than two decades and had a 12-year-old daughter. His mother, Maria Cornejo, told the New Jersey Monitor that he had diabetes and high blood pressure and hadn’t been receiving regular medication in detention. “I have a recording from the hospital that says when he arrived his heart had already stopped,” she told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday. The family is calling for an investigation.

Speaking on social media about Lopez-Cornejo’s death, Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez mentioned that another person held at Delaney Hall had recently passed away after being quickly released to the hospital. Once again, their death wasn’t reported as a result of ICE’s policy change. “This is meant to keep the number of deaths that are being reported in ICE custody to as low a number as possible,” he said. DHS didn’t respond to specific questions about the death of Lopez-Cornejo, instead referring Mother Jones to the ICE press release.

As Trejo Ricano and other cases show, official numbers of deaths in detention don’t tell the whole story. Earlier this year, a 31-year-old asylum seeker from Haiti died from hypothermia at a Pittsburgh bus stop only three days after being released from ICE custody. Daphy Michel, who suffered from severe mental illness, was found more than 20 miles away from her home in Charleroi, wearing summer clothes in freezing weather. In June, Michel’s death was ruled a homicide. An attorney for the family said they are planning to file a lawsuit. Michel’s death isn’t recorded on ICE’s website. “ICE had NOTHING to do with this woman’s death,” DHS declared on social media.

ICE reporting also doesn’t account for people who died shortly after being removed from the United States. Consider the case of Randall Gamboa Esquivel. Originally from Costa Rica, he was detained in south Texas for months and, in September 2025, deported to San José on an air ambulance in a vegetative state. The following month, Gamboa Esquivel passed away in the hospital.

“These avoidable tragedies underscore what we’ve known to be true for many years,” Laura Hernández, executive director of the abolitionist organization Freedom for Immigrants, said in a statement. “Nobody is safe for any amount of time in ICE custody because immigration detention has always been abusive and deadly by design.”

Amilcar Valencia, the executive director of El Refugio, which advocates for immigrants held at Stewart and their families, and who has been in touch with Trejo Ricano’s father, said it isn’t uncommon for detainees to be hospitalized only when they’re in critical condition. While it’s unclear if Trejo Ricano’s death could have been prevented, Valencia said the circumstances raise many questions for the family. “His dad asked why my son, who was in good health and did a lot of exercise, was very young and active, died all of a sudden,” Valencia said. “They want to know exactly what happened.”