The National Immigration Project keeps a memorial, and it keeps it by name. As of July 15, it lists 22 people who have died in ICE custody in 2026 [1].
The most recent entry is Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva, 45, from Venezuela. He died on July 13, found unresponsive during a bus transfer out of the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia; ICE has cited suspected cardiac arrest [1]. Another entry is Adrian Andreas Florian, 85, from Germany, who died on June 24 at Port Isabel, Texas [1].
The scale reads best against the recent past. ICE reported 33 deaths in custody during 2025, the highest figure in more than two decades [1]. In 2024 the number was 11 [1]. The 2026 count reached 22 before the middle of July [1].
There is a second difficulty worth naming: the public numbers do not agree. Different tallies circulate, and the discrepancies are largely a matter of which date each was taken on rather than a dispute about the underlying facts.
That is not a small problem. When a running total depends on the vintage of the source, the simplest question about a detention system - how many people have died in it this year - becomes something the public has to reconstruct. The memorial's answer, as of July 15, is 22 people, listed one at a time, with their names [1].
