The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, on Friday called for “prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations” into deaths in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, as the Trump administration faces intensifying scrutiny over a surge in fatalities inside its expanding detention network.
“Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld,” Türk said in a statement.
His intervention follows a report by Human Rights Watch released this week that documented 52 deaths in ICE custody during the first 500 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, which began in January 2025. The report alleged “violations of ICE policy and international human rights law.” A separate dataset from the University of California, Los Angeles Law Behind Bars data project found death levels in ICE custody had reached their highest since 2004, when 32 people died in Department of Homeland Security custody.
The DHS Office of Inspector General announced Wednesday that it is conducting an evaluation of deaths and use of force inside ICE detention facilities, covering the period from October 1, 2021, through March 31, 2026. “We are conducting this evaluation because of an increase of detainee deaths in ICE custody each year since fiscal year 2022,” the watchdog office said.
Türk also expressed alarm over the use of solitary confinement inside ICE detention centers. The UN has previously said that solitary confinement exceeding 15 days amounts to “torture.”
“All these factors exacerbate vulnerability and raise serious concerns as to whether some of these deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented,” Türk said.
The administration has opened new detention centers and is considering further expansion, boosting its capacity to hold up to 90,000 people, according to the UN. ICE currently detains about 60,000 people. The majority of its detention centers are run by private prison companies.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson denied there had been a spike in deaths. “ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards. All detainees are provided with proper meals, quality water, blankets, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson said. “There has been NO spike in deaths. Consistent with data over the last decade, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population.”
Human Rights Watch faulted what it called a lack of transparency about deaths inside what it described as ICE’s secretive facility network. “ICE so severely limits the information it provides to Congress, families and the public that oversight is nearly impossible,” said Dr. Katherine Peeler, a co-author of the HRW report and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “In the cases where we do have access to ICE and outside hospital records, we are seeing a breathtaking breach of the duty of care.”
When a detainee dies in ICE custody, the agency is required to inform the public within 48 hours and later release further reports.
Türk on Friday urged “the full restoration and strengthening of independent oversight mechanisms for immigration detention.” His call follows a series of deaths in ICE custody this year. MSI previously reported that at least 10 people in ICE custody died by suicide since January 2025, accounting for nearly 20% of all custody fatalities during that period, and that the suicides represented a far higher rate than the agency had ever recorded.