Deadliest year on record for U.S. immigration detention centers

A Honduran migrant died following an attack by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers as part of anti-immigration actions under President Donald Trump’s administration, bringing the total number of migrants killed in similar incidents to three.

According to The Guardian, 24-year-old José Castro Rivera, a Honduran migrant, died last Thursday after a car accident while fleeing an ICE raid.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security provided details on the operation but withheld information regarding Castro Rivera’s death and the status of other detained migrants.

A DHS official claimed that an ICE officer attempted CPR on Castro Rivera, but he died at the scene.

The fatal incident occurred on the busy eastbound Interstate 264 near the Military Highway interchange in Norfolk, southeastern Virginia. The Virginia State Police stated they were not involved in the chase, and the deadly accident remains under investigation.

This is the third known deadly incident involving migrants attempting to escape armed, masked federal officers—part of the Trump administration’s relentless crackdown on immigrants and the unprecedented nationwide expansion of ICE operations.

In August, 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez from Guatemala was killed on a highway after fleeing an ICE raid at a warehouse roughly 32 kilometers northeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. His death came just a month after another fatal ICE operation in Southern California.

In July, 56-year-old Jaime Alanis Garcia, a Mexican farmworker, fell nine meters from a greenhouse roof while fleeing federal agents in Ventura, California. Alanis Garcia, who had lived and worked in the U.S. for nearly 30 years to support his family in Mexico, suffered catastrophic injuries and was removed from life support after two days. This incident occurred during a raid in which over 300 people were arrested.

Trump and his anti-immigration advisors repeatedly claimed that the unprecedented resources and authority given to ICE were aimed at removing so-called “illegal criminals” from U.S. streets.

However, official data show that migrants with no criminal record now constitute the largest group in U.S. immigration detention. The number of individuals without criminal records arrested and detained by ICE under Trump has surpassed the number of those accused of crimes.

According to recent NPR research, at least 20 people have died in ICE detention so far this year, making 2025 the deadliest year since 2004.