U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) briefly published, then deleted, internal reviews from its website finding inadequate medical care in the cases of dozens of people who died in immigration detention centers.
The internal reports reviewed 33 deaths in ICE detention centers between September 2019 and January 2026. Of the 31 mortality reviews that reached a conclusion, 27 found that care was "not provided within the safe limits of practice" or "deviated beyond safe limits." Three of those reports say those deficiencies may have directly or indirectly contributed to deaths.
The Intercept reported that the reviews were posted on ICE's public records library on September 25, but they appeared to have been taken offline four days later, after an attorney representing The Intercept in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit discovered them.
Project Salt Box, a government accountability group, downloaded the reports before they were scrubbed from ICE's website and published them to the organization's GitHub repository.
The reports document recurring failures across facilities, years, and presidential administrations: Staff ignored detainees' sick calls or handled them by phone, medications were cut off, and staff failed to perform lifesaving measures like CPR during medical emergencies or performed them incorrectly.
The reports also contradict repeated public statements by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that ICE facilities meet national detention standards. The DHS Office of Public Affairs has sent Reason numerous statements over the past two years claiming that "ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens" and that "for many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives."
"We're not providing Holiday Inns," DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a press conference Wednesday. "These people broke the law."
Yet since the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign began last year, evidence keeps mounting that the already subpar standards at detention centers across the country have collapsed due to overcrowding and negligence. Medical examiner reports obtained by Reason showed two cases where detainees died from a severe tooth infection and COVID-19 pneumonia, respectively. A San Francisco Chronicle investigation published last April identified at least 17 cases where "people in ICE custody died after medical staff delayed or failed to provide critical care that might have saved their lives." There was a tuberculosis outbreak in a Colorado detention center and a measles outbreak at another detention center in Arizona. Internal audits and external investigations by civil rights groups have reported inhumane conditions in the largest detention center in the nation, a 5,000-bed tent camp in Texas. Suicides have spiked. Meanwhile, whistleblower photos and Inspector General reports released last month revealed severe overcrowding, insufficient medical care and hygiene, and food safety violations at several Florida detention centers.
The newly released mortality reviews confirm details of alleged medical neglect in several cases, such as that of Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old Haitian national who died in April 2025 of a heart attack at Broward Transitional Center (BTC)—a privately run facility in Pompano Beach, Florida, that contracts with ICE.
According to the internal report on Blaise's death, "A mortality review committee (MRC) determined BTC did not provide Ms. BLAISE medical care within the safe limits of practice."
The MRC found that, after Blaise collapsed, "1) BTC health staff deviated from basic life support (BLS) protocols; 2) Health staff failed to initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), despite Ms. BLAISE's pulselessness; and 3) Health staff did not include Ms. BLAISE's vital signs with their documentation of the emergency response."
The mortality report contradicts the public report ICE published on Blaise's death, which claimed that staff called for emergency medical services (EMS) and "immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation" and "continued providing CPR until EMS personnel arrived."
Detainees who witnessed Blaise collapse told a human rights report there was also a slow staff response, and guards initially ignored them when they yelled for help.
"We started yelling for help, but the guards ignored us," a former BTC detainee identified only as "Rosa" told the authors. "Finally, one officer approached slowly, looked at her without intervening, and then walked away. After that, it took eight minutes for the medical provider to arrive, and then another 15 or 20 before the rescue team came. By then, she was not moving."
Blaise's son told a county investigator that his mother said in a phone call with him on the day she died that staff refused to let her see a physician for chest pains.
Another internal review adds details to the case of Ismael Ayala-Uribe. The San Francisco Chronicle's investigation found Ayala-Uribe died in a hospital from septic shock caused by an untreated abscess on one of his buttocks. Three days earlier, Ayala-Uribe had complained to a nurse at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, California, about extremely sharp pain in his left buttock. However, after a doctor spoke to Ayala-Uribe over the phone, he was prescribed only over-the-counter pain medication, hemorrhoid ointment, and laxatives.
The ICE mortality review committee found that Ayala-Uribe's care "deviated beyond safe limits of practice." Specifically, medical staff didn't visually inspect the area he was complaining about, nor did staff report abnormal vital signs during his evaluations. Staff also failed to administer his medicine or perform the regular wellness checks that the physician ordered.
The review shows that the day before Ayala-Uribe died, guards requested that medical staff check on him due to his ill appearance, but medical staff didn't respond until more than 13 hours later.
"In a way, I'm relieved," Jose Ayala, Ayala-Uribe's younger brother, told the San Francisco Chronicle after the new reports were released. "Seeing that they saw what mistakes were and saying they need to act on it."
The DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post ICE Deletes Reports Flagging Medical Neglect in Detention Center Deaths appeared first on Reason Magazine.
