By
Donald Trump’s deportation czar, Tom Homan, apparently doesn’t think people dying while in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a big deal.
Amid ongoing outrage over allegedly horrid conditions in ICE facilities and mounting reports that ICE detainees are being denied basic necessities and human dignity, multiple detainee deaths have garnered national attention. Last week, Johnny Noviello, a Canadian citizen who’d obtained permanent residence in the U.S. and had been charged with drug trafficking, died in a Florida ICE facility, drawing concerned responses from Canadian officials. Also last week, Isidro Perez, a 75-year-old man who been admitted into the U.S. from Cuba nearly 60 years ago, died in ICE custody, as well. Perez appears to have been detained due to a marijuana possession conviction he received in the 1980s.
Both deaths are currently under investigation, ICE said.
According to ICE data, Perez’s death appears to bring the total number of reported deaths in ICE detention to 12 since the beginning of fiscal year 2025, which began last October. Including Noviello and Perez, nine deaths have occurred in ICE facilities during Trump’s second term. According to The Guardian, “under the past three administrations, the worst year saw 12 deaths in ICE custody. If the current pace continues, the total for 2025 could double those numbers.”
Nonetheless, Homan seemed unbothered when asked about Perez’s death.
“I’m unaware of that, I’m not aware of that. I mean, people die in ICE custody, people die in county jail, people die in state prisons,” he said. I’d argue it’s a sign of the MAGA movement’s failure of empathy that a mere month after a GOP senator downplayed deaths that could result from the Republican plan to cut Medicaid, Trump’s deportation czar is dismissing the loss of life in immigrant detention centers as though they were inevitable.
Homan went on to claim ICE is actually saving lives. “The question should be, how many lives does ICE save? Because when they go in detention, we find many with diseases and stuff that we deal with right away to prevent that,” he claimed, going on to argue that that “we have the highest detention standards in the industry.”
That last claim certainly runs counter to claims from immigrant rights advocates and health researchers who’ve documented instances of children reportedly being denied adequate medical care and suffering psychological trauma in ICE detention facilities.
Homan’s callous comments are sadly befitting an administration that has seemingly sought to dehumanize immigrants at every opportunity. The historical echoes are haunting. ICE detention centers have earned comparisons to concentration camps for years now — and growing reports of death and degradation at these facilities will only serve to make those comparisons more apt.