Türk tells the Human Rights Council that 23 people have died in ICE custody in 2026

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 7 September that four more people had died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since his June update, taking the 2026 total to 23. "There needs to be accountability for these deaths," he said.

In June, citing U.S. government figures, his office counted 18 deaths in the first five months of 2026 and one more in June. Five of those official 2026 deaths had been classed as suicides. The 2025 total was 33, against 11 in 2024. Türk said at least 52 people had died in ICE custody since the start of 2025.

ICE was holding more than 60,000 people at the June briefing, against about 40,000 in early 2025, with a stated plan to reach 90,000 by the end of 2026. A joint Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights paper in June said the death rate in ICE custody was the highest in more than a decade. The Department of Homeland Security inspector general is examining deaths from October 2021 through March 2026. DHS has said there is no spike and that the death rate under the current administration is 0.009 percent of the detained population. A Reuters analysis of ICE data found the death rate among detainees had more than doubled since January 2025.

Türk on Monday also asked the United States to stop returning people to places where they could suffer irreparable harm, including Haiti, and to give due process for all removals to third countries. He said he was alarmed by reports that ICE planned to equip agents with electric-shock gloves, which he said would increase the violence of operations.

The June statement had already asked for prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations into every death in ICE custody, and for families to receive truth, justice and reparation. Monday's speech added the new count and the gloves. It did not name the four people who died after June. Those names, if ICE publishes them, will sit on the agency's detainee death reports, which list date, facility and a short medical or manner-of-death line.

Twenty-three deaths in eight months is a rate, not an anecdote. Whether that rate tracks the rise in the locked population, the quality of care, or both is the question the inspector general's file is supposed to answer. Türk's office cannot compel a U.S. prosecution. It can put the number on the Council record and keep putting it there each session.

The gloves, if purchased, would be a different kind of fact: a tool chosen in advance, not a death recorded after the fact. Procurement papers, if they surface, will show quantity, vendor and intended units. Until then the warning stands as a warning.