The reversal of a Biden era policy comes as deaths in ICE custody are on a record pace this year.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer track or report the deaths of detainees who die after being released from its custody, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to PEOPLE on Friday, June 5. The decision reverses a Biden-era safeguard that was put in place specifically to stop the agency from releasing critically ill detainees in order to avoid recording their deaths as custody fatalities.
The policy change was established by new acting ICE director David Venturella and was first reported by The Washington Post. It eliminates a previous requirement that ICE report deaths of former detainees for up to 30 days following their release. In an unsigned statement, ICE described the change as reasonable, saying the agency bears no responsibility when a person dies weeks after leaving its facilities.
The conflict of interest at the center of the reversal
The decision carries a significant conflict of interest that has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and civil rights groups. Before taking over as acting director, Venturella spent more than a decade as a top executive at GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies, from 2012 to 2023, then continued as a paid consultant for the company until 2025. GEO Group earns roughly half of its total revenue from ICE contracts and currently operates 23 ICE detention facilities across the country.
More pointedly, GEO Group is currently being sued by the family of Martin Vargas Arellano, a detainee whose death in 2021 directly prompted the Biden administration to create the very policy that Venturella has now reversed. Vargas Arellano had been detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a GEO Group-operated facility in California. He was hospitalized, brain-dead and comatose for a week before ICE released him. His family and their attorneys say he contracted COVID-19 at the facility. ICE previously settled its portion of the lawsuit, but the case against GEO Group is ongoing.
A civil rights attorney representing Vargas Arellano’s family told the Post that rescinding the policy undermines efforts to ensure proper standards are maintained inside detention facilities.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, wrote to Venturella in late May highlighting what she described as a pattern of movement between ICE leadership and the private prison industry, noting that GEO Group became one of ICE’s most profitable contractors during his tenure there. Prior to his time in the private sector, Venturella had spent more than 25 years working for ICE and its predecessor agency, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Deaths in custody are rising
The policy rollback arrives at a particularly fraught moment. ICE detainee deaths have reached 18 so far in 2026, putting the agency on pace for a record year. A total of 48 detainees have died since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, according to ICE’s own data. A report released last month also found that at least 10 detainees have died by suicide since January 2025, with seven of those deaths occurring after October 2025 alone.
Meanwhile, on an earnings call in May, GEO Group’s CEO announced the reopening of the Adelanto facility where Vargas Arellano had been held and described the previous year as the most successful period for new business in the company’s history.
Conditions under scrutiny at Delaney Hall
The announcement also comes amid weeks of protests and confrontations between federal agents and demonstrators outside Delaney Hall, an ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey. Reports of a widespread hunger strike and poor conditions inside the facility have fueled the unrest, claims the Trump administration has denied.
New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim visited the facility last month and said he personally witnessed substandard food, a detainee with stage 3 cancer, a pregnant woman not receiving full prenatal care, and a woman who experienced a miscarriage without receiving any medical attention, according to the senator and the New Jersey Department of Health. The Trump administration has pushed back on those characterizations.
ICE, for its part, maintained in its Friday statement that providing safety and well-being for people in its custody remains a top priority and went as far as claiming its network of detention facilities offers the highest level of healthcare many detainees have ever received.