Egregious violations of ICE medical care standards played a prominent role in eight deaths in immigration detention facilities from 2010 to 2012. Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention, a report jointly produced by the American Civil Liberties Union, Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center, examines these deaths and the agency’s response to them. Our research shows that even though ICE conducted reviews that identified violations of medical standards as contributing factors in these deaths, routine ICE detention facility inspections before and after the deaths failed to acknowledge—or at times dismissed—these violations. Instead of forcing changes in culture, systems, and processes that could reduce future deaths, ICE’s deficient inspections system essentially swept the agency’s own death review findings under the rug.

Read the Executive Summary

Spanish Language Version