ICE Detention Is Safer Than A British Prison

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has “urged prompt action to prevent further loss of life in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and called for independent investigations into all deaths.”

You’d think that the U.S. government was running Cambodian-style killing fields, or at best Chinese-style “re-education” camps with poor regard for the inhabitants.

The truth is, aliens detained under U.S. immigration law are unusually safe. ICE detention is highly regulated, and Department of Homeland Security officers follow strict rules to protect detainees.

The latest media freak-out was perhaps sparked by a report from Physicians for Human Rights, a group that believes “seeking asylum from persecution is a human right.” But do they believe in repatriating those whose claims are denied? I doubt it.

The group’s globalist viewpoint is evident in their videos, such as “The U.S. made an elective decision to traumatize children,” and “How Title 42 expulsions harm health and violate rights.” In fact, the decision to traumatize children was made by their parents and the alien smugglers who made them cross into this country illegally and alone and often released them to strangers. And Title 42 is a law that expressly protects America from contagious disease.

No one wants deaths in schools, workplaces, trains, planes, automobiles, or detention facilities. But they happen. The question is, at what rate? Are they preventable?

Thousands of people die in U.S. prisons and jails each year from heart attacks, cancer, disease, drugs, suicide, violence, and other causes. In 2019, there were 381 deaths in federal prisons, which is 259/100,000. There were 3,853 deaths in state prisons that year, which is 330/100,000.

The death rate in ICE detention is a fraction of that. There are now around 60,000 people in immigration detention, double the number under Biden, but down from the peak of 73,000 earlier this year. Last year, at most 38 people died in ICE custody. That’s 63/100,000 – about a quarter of the rate that die in federal prisons and a sixth of those who die in state prisons.

In England and Wales, the death rate among prisoners is over 400/100,000 – about seven times the rate at which people die in ICE custody. Is Mr. Türk “alarmed” at that? Calling for “urgent preventive action?” No.

In 1978, there were 59 deaths in England and Wales out of 49,500 inmates. In 2025, there were 394 deaths out of 97,400. Why did the prison population only double, but prison deaths rise by a factor of roughly seven? Surely the UN wants to know? Probably not. Because Trump can’t be blamed.

The easiest way to avoid detention is for illegal aliens to go home. There are about 7.3 million aliens on ICE’s Non-Detained Docket, meaning they have an ongoing case where they are probably trying to avoid being deported. Of these, at least 1.6 million have Final Orders for Removal, meaning they have had their day in court, appeals, and all “due process” – yet they remain. And 660,000 of them have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges on top of being here illegally.

ICE is keeping tabs on only around 180,000 of the 7.3 million using “Alternatives to Detention,” and only a tiny fraction wear wrist or ankle monitors – the rest are expected to phone in when asked. If they don’t, ICE has to find them, detain them, and then deport them.

Biden hamstrung ICE with red tape, but now that the government is taking its statutory duties seriously, the globalists are crying foul. The truth is, they don’t want any immigration detention because it often results in deportation. Obstructing deportation is the real agenda. Making false claims about detention conditions is the age-old tool globalists use to accomplish their agenda.

One more thing the media overlooks is how many deaths detaining those 60,000 people likely prevented. The murder rate in the U.S. is 5/100,000. In Jamaica, it is 24/100,000. If, hypothetically, ICE detainees had the same murder rate as Jamaica, that would save 15 innocent lives per year. There are about 40 rapes per 100,000 in the US each year. So detaining 60,000 illegal aliens could have prevented at least 25 rapes. That doesn’t count Americans spared death or injury from drunk driving, assault, or robbery caused by illegal aliens.

Those numbers assume that the rates of criminality in the detained population are at U.S. national averages. But we know criminality varies dramatically by country of origin. In Sweden, 63% of sex crime convicts were first or second-generation immigrants.

The UN and legacy U.S. media are wildly spinning statistics that actually make ICE look good. That is because, like many politicians and left-wing activists, they want zero immigration enforcement. They focus on tragic but comparatively small numbers of deaths in custody, rather than the much larger salutary impact on U.S. public safety, infrastructure, and the labor market.

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Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.