Dying in ICE custody: Inside one family’s story of heartbreak

Fifty-three people died in ICE custody during Donald Trump’s first 500 days back in office.Fault Linesinvestigates the case of Ismael Ayala-Uribe. Save Share Los Angeles, California –Saturdays marked a weekly pilgrimage for Lucia Uribe. Every weekend, she would travel to the edge of California's desert to visit her son, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, in detention. Ismael was among the hundreds of thousands of people swept up in United States President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Born in Mexico and brought to the US as a child, he was arrested on August 17 while working at a car wash. Ever since, he had been in the custody of immigration authorities, first at a local jail and later at a detention centre for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Adelanto, California. But one Saturday was different. Lucia remembers that Ismael’s hands looked paler, his eyes were bloodshot, and the fever he had was rising. “Mom, I’m not going to make it,” Lucia recalls Ismael telling her. There was little she could do but reassure him. “I told him, ‘Oh, my son, just hang in there as long as you can,’” Lucia said. “When I said goodbye to him, I felt something in my chest, a tightness, and it made me want to cry.” It was the last time she would see her son alive. Lucia’s fears were confirmed by a knock at her door two days later, when police told her that her son had died at 2:32am on September 22, 2025. Ismael was one of more than 50 people to die in ICE custody during the first 500 days of Trump's second term. A coroner's report from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in southern California found that his death was caused by complications from an abscess in his pelvic region. Ismael's family, however, has argued that insufficient medical treatment in ICE facilities led a preventable infection to fester into a deadly condition. For months, the Al Jazeera documentary seriesFault Lineshas spoken to people in ICE custody and the families of those who never made it out alive, to understand the conditions that could have led to deaths like Ismael's. What it found was that 2025, the year Ismael died, was the deadliest year in history for those in ICE custody. But experts fear 2026 is on track to match or surpass that record. The Trump administration has consistently denied reports that deaths in ICE custody are increasing....