Four migrants die in ICE custody in 10 days in grim start to year

Four migrants died in US immigration custody during the first 10 days of 2026, according to government press releases.

It marked a grim start to the year after record detention deaths under the Trump administration in 2025.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed the fatalities occurred between 3 and 9 January.

They involved two individuals from Honduras, one from Cuba, and another from Cambodia.

The Trump administration aims to ramp up deportations, increasing migrant detention.

As of 7 January, ICE held 69,000 people, a number expected to rise after a massive funding infusion from the US Congress.

At least 30 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest level in two decades, agency figures showed.

Setareh Ghandehari, the advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, called the high number of deaths “truly staggering” and urged the administration to shutter detention centers.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the rate of deaths had remained in step with historic norms as the detention population has climbed.

“As bed space has expanded, we have maintained (a) higher standard of care than most prisons that hold US citizens — including providing access to proper medical care,” McLaughlin said.

The Cuban detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on 3 January in Camp East Montana, a detention site opened by the Trump administration on the grounds of Fort Bliss in Texas.

ICE said it was investigating the death of Lunas, adding that officials said he had become disruptive and placed him in isolation.

Officials later found him in distress, and emergency medical technicians pronounced him dead, ICE said.

The two Honduran men – Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 42, and Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz, 68 – died in area hospitals in Houston and Indio, California, on 5 and 6 January, respectively. Both deaths followed heart-related issues, ICE said.

Parady La, a 46-year-old Cambodian man, died on 9 January following severe drug withdrawal symptoms at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, ICE said.

The administration began using that space in 2025, it said.

The Trump administration has greatly reduced the number of migrants released from detention on humanitarian grounds, a move critics say has driven some to accept deportation.

In addition to the in-custody deaths, an ICE officer fatally shot a Minnesota mother of three last week, an incident that sparked protests in Minneapolis and cities around the country.