Exposing the Silence Buried Within ICE’s Death Reports

What defines a death—and who determines its visibility?
This question surfaced as I began tracing the number of people who’ve died in U.S. detention centers. I expected documentation. Instead, I found gaps.

The search led not to clarity, but to contradiction. Numbers shifted. Names disappeared, reappeared, then conflicted across lists. I started with data. I ended facing a harder reality: institutional silence.

This piece attempts to map that silence. It asks how bureaucracy conceals death—how individuals held in custody can vanish not just physically, but from record, from memory, and from mechanisms of accountability.

The Vanishing of Johnny Noviello

Consider someone who dies in detention—but isn’t formally counted.

ICE is required to publish death reports within 90 days. Yet delays, redactions, and jurisdictional ambiguity obscure those records
(ICE Detention Standards and Reporting Policies).

Johnny Noviello died while under ICE custody in a Bureau of Prisons facility. His death wasn’t included in ICE’s official tally—because the facility wasn’t ICE-run.

That omission meant ICE’s reported numbers appeared lower than they truly were, at least in terms of individuals held under their authority.

This kind of jurisdictional technicality shapes public perception. When deaths aren’t counted in ICE’s own reports due to facility ownership, it creates a statistical blind spot—softening scrutiny and stalling accountability. The death wasn’t completely hidden; ICE did release a report. But because the facility wasn’t ICE-operated, it didn’t factor into their official toll.

If that sounds confusing, consider: perhaps confusion is the point.

Disappearance Through Categorization

What does it mean to die “in ICE custody”?
The answer shifts depending on the building, the contract, the classification.

• ICE Custody: Detained under ICE authority—regardless of location
• ICE-Run Facilities: Managed directly by ICE or private contractors (CoreCivic, GEO Group)
• Local Jails / Federal Prisons: Used to house detainees—but not ICE-operated

A person may be held by ICE in a county jail—but if that person dies there, their death may not appear in ICE’s count. They existed in life. But their death fell between jurisdictions.

These aren’t rare cases. Across the U.S., ICE contracts with local jails to detain immigrants, creating a patchwork of responsibility where federal custody plays out in non-federal spaces. When death occurs in these spaces, the lines blur. ICE may exclude the death from its tally—because the facility wasn’t ICE-run—even if the individual was held under ICE authority
(American Immigration Council – Detention and Deportation)
(Physicians for Human Rights – Deadly Failures Report).

This jurisdictional sleight of hand lets deaths slip through cracks in the public record. The person was detained. The person died. But the system that held them may not claim the loss. It’s a bureaucratic vanishing act—one that softens numbers, shields agencies from scrutiny, and leaves families searching across institutional boundaries.

In some cases, even local officials aren’t aware of who’s being held in their jails under ICE contracts. And when death occurs, the question becomes not just what happened—but who is responsible for remembering it.

What Gets Reported—What Doesn’t

ICE’s 2021 death notification policy outlines a clear sequence
(ICE Detention Standards and Reporting Policies):

• Report to ICE leadership within 12 hours
• Public news release within two business days
• Full review published within 90 days

But these steps aren’t sacred. They’re bypassed. Delayed. Erased.
Critically ill detainees are sometimes released mere hours before death—technically no longer in custody, and thus no longer counted. Their final moments unfold in hospital beds, not detention cells. Yet the system that held them remains untouched by the weight of their passing.

ICE’s official death toll excludes these post-release deaths, creating a statistical sleight of hand. The numbers shrink. But the loss remains.

In some cases, individuals were unconscious when released—unable to speak, consent, or even know they’d been let go. It’s release in name only—a bureaucratic maneuver that distances the agency from accountability.

And when death comes, the trail vanishes.
Video footage overwritten.
Witnesses released before interviews.
Investigations omit key facts.

The silence isn’t accidental—it’s procedural.

So we ask again: What happens when a body dies in custody—but doesn’t count?

A Ledger of Incomplete Loss

ICE officially reports 68 deaths in custody since 2017.
Advocacy groups—and grief itself—report more. Many more.

• Deaths excluded because they occurred in facilities ICE doesn’t run
• Deaths after release, strategically timed to fall outside counting thresholds
• Deaths that were preventable—but buried beneath silence and spreadsheets

Even in death—people disappear again.
Not only from life, but from record.
From count.
From consequence.

So I ask: Who owns the ledger?
Who shapes the categories?
Who decides what loss is official—and what loss floats untethered through bureaucracy?

Is it a glitch—or a tactic?

Let This Be the Reckoning

Let this be a call to trace not just the names—but the absences.
To recognize the deaths behind the data.
To name what silence conceals—and confront it.

This isn’t just a story about miscounted deaths.
It’s about what systems choose to remember—and what they allow to disappear.

When names are omitted for jurisdictional reasons, or excluded because someone died hours after release, it raises more than procedural concerns.
It suggests a deliberate effort to obscure.
A quiet cover-up hiding in plain sight.

What are you protecting?
What are you hiding?

Because when harm is sanitized through technicalities,
The loss doesn’t disappear—it metastasizes.
Into silence.
Into grief.
Into language that makes tragedy palatable.

Absence is never neutral.
And every missing name is not just a failure of policy—
It’s a failure of memory.

I’m Leslie a-call-to-action.org an advocate and storyteller focused on racial justice, immigration rights, and systemic critique. This piece grew from a simple search—and a silence that kept deepening. Behind every statistic is a story; behind every omission, a decision. My work explores these margins, where loss is bureaucratically softened and accountability becomes elusive. I hope this writing helps confront that quiet—and honors those whose absence was never meant to be counted.