Four New ICE Death Announcements Cement 2025 as the Deadliest Year in ICE History

3 of 4 died in Newly Opened GEO Group Facilities

December 18, 2025.

ICE announced the deaths of more people in custody today than occurred in all of Fiscal Year 2022.

The four new death announcements bring the total for 2025 to 32, which equals the highest ever year on record - 2004. Put another way, more people will die in immigration detention this year than any other year in U.S. history.

These four announcements appear, apparently without irony, just above (or later in time than) the agency’s self-congratulatory declaration of the most successful federal law enforcement recruitment drive in American history:

These announcements are correlated in more than just time.

A deadly week for GEO

Men died in ICE-contracted facilities owned or operated by The GEO Group in Baldwin, Michigan (North Lake Processing Center), Newark, New Jersey (Delaney Hall), and a truly shocking (though not surprising) third death in as many years in Philipsburg, PA (Moshannon Valley ICE Processing Center). I will analyze these announcements tomorrow.

GEO has accounted for nearly one in three of all deaths in ICE custody this calendar year — 10 in all.

The company’s former EVP for Business Development, former ICE deportation official David Venturella, is now back working for the feds, running ICE detention from the shadows on behalf of former GEO consultant Tom Homan, according to an August report by Douglas MacMillan in WaPo. Lawmakers asked Homan to explain, but something tells me they’re still waiting.

Here are GEO’s plans and analysis from earlier this month.

Here’s what’s in store for the future:

Here’s how critical ICE is to the future of the company:

And here’s what it all means in terms of bottom line.

More later . . .