The cold-blooded killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have energized a national movement to hold ICE agents accountable for their lawlessness. Some governors and state legislators are proposing laws to end state agreements (287gs) between ICE and local law enforcement to prevent police and correctional officers from sharing information with ICE and CBP. Executive orders are being written by governors to prevent ICE from arresting people in so-called “sensitive areas,” such as courts, schools, day care, health care settings, and places of worship. Communities are turning out in droves to stop DHS from transforming warehouses into mega-sized concentration camps to hold immigrants. Boycotts and protests are growing in an effort to halt the Trump administration’s monstrous campaign to destroy immigrant communities and the allies who stand with them.
Unfortunately, too little attention has been given to the immigrants who have met their demise in ICE prisons. Thirty-two detainees died in ICE custody in 2025, the largest number in two decades. That number is set to rise swiftly, with the deaths of six more dying in ICE custody in January 2026. The inhumane conditions of these concentration camps, with inedible food, poor sanitation, a dearth of medical/mental health care, and even drinking water in short supply, leave immigrant men, women, and children at great risk. Human beings are murdered by a system that allows people to be stolen from their loved ones and communities without due process, to die without witnesses. There are no cell phone photos, no crowds of protestors shouting at their abusers and killers.
The dead are victims of an unjust system enabled by a fascist leader and his barbaric followers. They are constructing a system of mass incarceration for immigrants using taxpayer dollars to transform warehouses into profit-making mega-prisons. Laws are being legitimized to allow ICE agents to arrest and imprison noncitizens to await deportation, without rights to any due process. Many have lived in this country for decades. Most have committed no crimes.
Just as we remember Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we must bear witness to the humanity of those who died in captivity. The circumstances of their deaths, sometimes reported as suicides, have been challenged by those who knew the victims. ICE claimed that Geraldo Lunas Campos died of attempted suicide, but a medical examiner reported his death as a homicide caused by asphyxiation. Mr. Lunas Campos was imprisoned at Camp East Montana in the Texas desert, recently built to hold thousands. He was the father of four children. His criminal background does not justify his murder.
Most of the dead remain statistics, the evidence of their humanity disappeared.
Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Parody La’s family fled the Cambodian genocide and settled in Philadelphia when he was two years old. His brother, John, was shot and killed in 2005. Mr. La struggled with substance abuse. When he was abducted by ICE on Jan. 6 and taken to the Philadelphia ICE facility, he let it be known that he was going through fentanyl withdrawal. He died 48 hours later, brain dead. Parody La was 46 years old. His nephew remembers him as someone who, “… always put himself aside and looked out for his family.” Mr. La’s 23-year-old daughter, Jazmine, started a GoFundMe to “…raise funds towards my family’s fight for my dad.” “Despite the trauma he endured and a long battle with addiction, he never stopped loving his family or trying to be there for us.”
Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, left his family in Nicaragua, arriving in the U.S. in March 24. He had been a farmer in Nicaragua. He left his family to find work to pay for his two sons’ education and to repair his mother’s home. He was first employed at a dairy farm in Minnesota, but after being diagnosed with tuberculosis, he was hospitalized for a month and lost his job. Mr. Diaz eventually found work at a Korean restaurant, cooking chicken and washing dishes. Nine days later, on Jan. 6, he was abducted by ICE. He died on Jan. 14, the third prisoner to die at Camp East Montana, since its opening in 2025. ICE reported that security staff found him “unconscious and unresponsive in his room,” and list his cause of death as a “presumed suicide.” His family doubts that he killed himself. “He was a person with a lot of strength who wanted to work hard, and who wanted to help his children,” said an older brother, Jairo Lenín Díaz. “He was always tired, but he worked really hard … And that’s how his life ended … That’s all that life had for him.”
Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz, Heber Sanchez Dominguez, and Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres also died in January, while in ICE custody. Because the U.S. is under no obligation to cover the costs of repatriating family members, their families must raise the thousands of dollars needed to bring their loved ones home.
73,000 human beings are currently incarcerated by ICE as of January 2026, a 75% increase since last year.
Sara Weinberger lives in Easthampton.