Nine migrants have died in ice custody since Trump assumed the position, says Ice Head

Nine people have died while they were under the custody of the application of immigration and customs since President Donald Trump assumed the position, the interim director of ICE testified on Wednesday as he withdrew the growing concerns of the decrease in funds and overcrowding within the agency’s detention centers.

The total number of deaths in custody since January 20 is only three deaths below the same number seen throughout the fiscal year 2024. Previous years since 2018, with the exception of 2020, when there were 21 deaths, he saw an average of 5 deaths a year.

“We carry out an exhaustive investigation into all those,” said Todd Lyons, interim director of ICE, to death legislators. “Ice, as I said, is dedicated to transparency.”

Bloomberg through Getty Images

The ICE website only lists seven deaths in custody for this fiscal year as of Thursday. Lyons said his website will be properly updated with the correct numbers, as required by Congress.

However, some legislators are addressed to Lyons before the Chamber Assignments Committee on National Security, ICE to arrest more people than they can handle and pay safely.

ICE, for its fiscal year 2024 that ended in September, received funds for 41,500 detention beds, but had more than 52,000 people in custody from last week, said representative Lauren Underwood de Illinois, who is the main democrat of the Subcommittee.

“You may be one or two months after running out of funds to support this current level of operations,” he told Lyons.

Lyons denied that ICE is left without money and said that the agency is “working within our media”, while anticipating additional federal funds, partly through a budget reconciliation package that is being promoted by the house. Lyons also recognized, in subsequent questioning, ICE’s open application of $ 312.5 million of the federal funds changed that, according to him, would add up to 60,000 beds for the fourth quarter of this year.

In total, Lyons said that ICE can reach 100,000 beds, although it did not have a direct response when the representative Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) If ICE will still have a financial deficit if $ 312.5 million requested will be received.

“I can promise the community, and I can guarantee that we are going to work financially within our means to ensure that we do not have a deficit,” he replied.

Lyons’s response follows the reports that ICE, in March, told Congress to anticipate a budget deficit of almost 2 billion.

The Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) representative, who addresses Lyons, also accused the repression of immigration of the Trump administration of exalting while ignoring human health and security, which resulted in the deaths in custody.

“What we have seen in the Trump administration should send chills by the spine of each American. The fact is that the administration is not focusing on the worst of the worst, as he says,” he said. “According to public reports, the approach has been largely in immigrants who are legally here and those who are illegally here, but mostly represent absolutely no threat to the public.”

She cited examples of students with green cards and arrested visas, along with people with legal status and without criminal record or criminal record. Some detention facilities, as a result of overcrowding, lack access to bathrooms and water, and adequate nutrition and medical care, he said.

The last death in custody that appears publicly for ICE was that of a 27 -year -old man from Colombia who allegedly died from suicide in April after suffering health problems while he was in custody. His mental health appointments were rescheduled twice in the days before his death, once due to personnel problems, according to the ICE website.