Nine people have died in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency since Donald Trump took office, acting director Todd Lyons testified on Wednesday, as Democratic lawmakers grilled the official over the Trump administration’s plans to massively increase its funding.
“We do conduct a thorough investigation on all of those,” Lyons said, adding, “ICE, as I’ve said, is dedicated to transparency.”
The comments came as Democrats on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Department of Homeland Security pressed Lyons over conditions in ICE detention centers, which Rep. Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, said were “abysmal” and “tantamount to human rights abuses.”
“What we’ve seen under the Trump administration should send chills down the spine of every American,” Escobar said during the hearing.
The agency has only publicly disclosed information on seven deaths for this fiscal year, the most recent of which was the April 8 passing of Brayan Rayo-Garzon, a Colombian who reportedly died by suicide, after a scheduled mental health evaluation was delayed multiple times.
The deaths in custody, which Democrats accused ICE of being slow to report, are already nearing the worst full-year total under the Biden administration, when 12 died in custody in fiscal year 2024, according to an analysis from Prism Reports.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Escobar said ICE was slated for a 365 percent increase in detention spending as part of the Trump administration’s larger budget push to increase Homeland Security spending by $43.8 billion.
The Texas Democrat argued the increased spending on detention wasn’t delivering better results for detainees, but rather private detention companies, who maintain large parts of the ICE detention network.
“The increase in costs to taxpayers obviously hasn’t translated into an increase in humane conditions, but I bet it has meant an increase in profits for these private companies,” she said. “That’s what American tax dollars have been funding.”
Lyons countered that ICE prefers to work with facilities maintained by local government jurisdictions, but Democrat-run “sanctuary” areas that don’t cooperate with ICE mean the agency has to detain people away from their local communities in privately run facilities.
As part of the Trump administration’s goal of rapidly deporting over a million people, ICE is reportedly holding 52,000 people in detention, nearly 10,000 more than the agency is budgeted for, according to USA Today.
Lyons testified on Wednesday that the agency’s detention capacity could grow to as high as 100,000 beds with additional funding.
In March, ICE reportedly told Congress it was already short $2 billion to maintain its operations through the end of this fiscal year, which ends in September, though Lyons said on Wednesday the agency is operating “within our means.”
