ICE discloses 11 custody deaths; court orders DHS to justify journalist detention

ICE's disclosure of 11 custody deaths in roughly 10 weeks — from January through early March 2026 — is historically anomalous. In 2023, the most recent full year before the Trump second term, ICE reported 12 custody deaths for the entire year. The 2026 rate extrapolates to roughly 55 deaths annually if it holds, nearly five times the 2023 level. ICE is required by law to report custody deaths to Congress within 30 days, but the disclosure on March 10 came in response to press inquiries rather than through a proactive congressional notification, raising questions about whether the statutory reporting requirement was being followed.

The Rodríguez Flores case has become the highest-profile press freedom case directly involving ICE. She was driving her marked Nashville Noticias news vehicle and was stopped near a gym she frequented — a location her defense attorneys say ICE tracked specifically. She had covered a series of stories about ICE operations in the Nashville area, including reporting on the Minneapolis CBP killings and the warrantless home entry practices ICE had been training its officers to use. Her legal team argued that the timing and method of her arrest — outside her home gym, in a non-public place, without a judicial warrant — indicated targeted surveillance of a journalist.

The amended petition filed March 10 made two distinct constitutional claims. The First Amendment count argued that arresting a journalist for her reporting constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint-based enforcement — the government cannot use immigration enforcement as a tool to punish speech it dislikes. The Fifth Amendment count argued that her detention without charges, without bond, and without a hearing violated due process. Both claims are novel in the immigration context: courts have typically given ICE broad enforcement discretion, and applying First Amendment press freedom protections to immigration enforcement is a legal question that has not been fully resolved.

The federal judge's March 10 order requiring DHS to file written justification for Rodríguez Flores's continued detention was significant because it created a paper record that would force DHS to articulate its legal basis. If DHS's written justification cited her immigration status without acknowledging her pending legal protections — the asylum claim, the green card application, the work permit — it would expose the agency to further constitutional challenge. The court was, in effect, asking: 'Why is this particular person being held, and what is your legal basis?' — a question ICE preferred not to answer in writing.

The 11 deaths and the journalist arrest are connected by the broader context of ICE's accelerated enforcement pace in 2026. TRAC Immigration data showed ICE was detaining people at a rate more than three times the 2023 average, with the additional detainees being held in facilities that were not designed for the population size. Overcrowding and inadequate medical care have historically preceded spikes in custody deaths. Several of the 11 deaths were attributed to medical emergencies that, advocates argued, would have been survivable with adequate monitoring and prompt treatment in a properly staffed facility.

Press freedom organizations including the RCReporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the Rodríguez Flores petition. CPJ's statement noted that the U.S., which had historically criticized other countries for jailing journalists, now had an active case of a reporter being held in immigration detention with no charges filed for her immigration status pending adjudication — while her attorneys alleged the arrest was a direct response to her journalism about the agency detaining her.