ICE Detention Deaths Fall Under Trump.

"Since the Trump Administration announced a punitive immigration detention policy in 2018 that separated families, reports have surfaced of immigrants who have died while in detention or shortly after being released to medical facilities for treatment. It's understandable why news consumers and suppliers are interested in deaths in detention facilities given the Trump Administration's actions on this issue, but the distinct impression from reading all of these stories is that being detained is more dangerous than ever," says Alex Nowrasteh, analyst of immigration policy at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C.

To check whether this was true, Nowrasteh estimated the annual death rate in immigration detention. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) runs all of the detention facilities and it provides the number of deaths and admissions, notes Nowrasteh.

The Fiscal Year 2018 death rate in ICE immigration detention was 2.3 per 100,000 detainees, a 39% drop relative to the rate for FY2017. That improvement follows on a deterioration in FY2017 from FY2016. In FY2017, the death rate per 100,000 detainees increased by 31% relative to FY2016. The death rate began to rise in FY2015 from a low point of 1.4 per 100,000 in FY2014. The largest percentage increases during this time was a 60% jump from FY2014 to...