UN rights chief calls for independent investigations into deaths in US immigration custody

The United Nations' top human-rights official has called for independent, impartial investigations into a mounting toll of deaths in United States immigration detention, an unusually direct rebuke of a close Western ally that places Washington's enforcement drive squarely against international human-rights norms.

In a statement issued on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was alarmed by deaths in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and urged the US government to take urgent preventive action. His office said at least 52 people have died in ICE custody since the start of 2025, when President Donald Trump returned to office and sharply expanded immigration enforcement.

I call for prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations into all deaths in ICE custody.

Türk said 18 people had died in the first five months of 2026, with a further death reported on 4 June. That compares with 33 deaths recorded over the whole of 2025 and 11 in 2024, according to figures cited by his office. Five of this year's deaths were officially classified as suicides.

A system expanding faster than its oversight

The deaths have come as the US detention system has grown rapidly. ICE was holding more than 60,000 people, up from roughly 40,000 in early 2025, with plans to expand capacity to 90,000 by the end of 2026, the High Commissioner's office said. The expansion has drawn on a network of private contractors and a multi-billion-dollar funding boost for immigration enforcement.

Türk pointed to a pattern of conditions he said raised serious questions about whether some deaths could have been avoided. His office cited allegations over the use of force, the reported use of solitary confinement — which the UN regards as a form of torture beyond 15 days and which is associated with a heightened risk of suicide — and what it called inhuman conditions, including inadequate healthcare and food and exposure to disease.

He also warned that a lack of transparency around the circumstances of deaths undermines accountability, and urged authorities to prioritise alternatives to detention, particularly for pregnant women, people with significant medical or mental-health conditions, and children.

All these factors exacerbate vulnerability and raise serious concerns as to whether some of these deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented.

An appeal to international law

The High Commissioner framed his appeal in the language of binding obligations rather than diplomatic concern, stressing that governments must protect the right to life of anyone deprived of their liberty. He insisted that detention facilities comply with international human-rights standards and invoked the principle of non-refoulement, the prohibition on returning people to places where they face serious harm.

Türk said accountability had to extend to the families of those who had died.

"Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims' families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld," he said.

For a European audience, the intervention resonates beyond US borders. The same body of international human-rights law that Türk invoked underpins the European Union's own asylum and returns policies, and a formal UN reproach of US detention practices sharpens long-running debates about the rule of law, migration and the treatment of detainees on both sides of the Atlantic.

Washington pushes back

US authorities have rejected the suggestion of a worsening crisis. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told NBC News that there had been "NO spike in deaths" and said ICE "is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards."

That defence sits uneasily with other official data. The DHS Office of Inspector General has announced two reviews: one examining detainee deaths in ICE custody between October 2021 and March 2026, and another into the use of force in detention. The watchdog said it had acted because deaths had risen every fiscal year since 2022. According to figures reported by the Associated Press, the in-custody death rate reached 72.32 per 100,000 detainees in 2026, up from 13.29 per 100,000 in 2022.

The use-of-force review followed an earlier inspector-general report that documented violations at a Louisiana facility, including a prohibited chokehold and a guard who used a pen to stab a detainee. Conditions inside individual centres have also fuelled unrest: Delaney Hall, an ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, saw detainee hunger-strike protests this year.

Why it matters

The UN intervention crystallises a tension at the heart of the Trump administration's immigration agenda: a detention apparatus scaled up far faster than the safeguards meant to govern it. Whether Washington opens the independent investigations Türk has demanded — or continues to insist its system meets its own standards — will test how far an established democracy is prepared to subject its enforcement machinery to outside scrutiny, and how much weight international human-rights norms still carry when applied to a permanent member of the UN Security Council.