Jhon Javier Benavides Quintana left his home in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to find safety and better opportunities in the U.S. and to provide for his two young children, Jeremy and Mia. The decision to undertake the treacherous and potentially deadly journey north in February 2024 was an act of tremendous sacrifice. In recent years, communities in Ecuador have been devastated by worsening violence and an economic crisis that’s forced tens of thousands to flee to the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Benavides Quintana was apprehended by Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, in late March 2024 and transferred to Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico, about two months later. Even in the darkest moments of uncertainty, Benavides Quintana’s relatives said he remained hopeful, turning to religion. He read the Bible to others detained at Otero, run by the private prison company Management and Training Corporation (MTC).

But on the morning of June 15, 2024, the 32-year-old was pronounced dead. 

It took Benavides Quintana’s family about five months to repatriate his body to Ecuador for a proper burial. Maria Benavides Quintana, Jhon’s sister, and Itzayana Banda of the New Mexico Dream Team, said his remains were nearly cremated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement without the family’s consent. (An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that if “neither the family nor the consulate claims the remains, ICE shall schedule an indigent’s burial, consistent with local procedures. … Under no circumstances shall ICE authorize cremation.”) His remains finally arrived in Ecuador in late November. 

“[Jhon] left to provide a better future for his children, our mother, our father, for his well-being. Instead, he encountered death. My brother will forever live in the memory of his family, his children, and his friends,” Maria said in a phone call from Guayaquil. 

If the family hadn’t received assistance from Ecuadorian officials, Maria said it would have been impossible for them to cover the estimated $15,000 they were told it would cost to repatriate her brother’s body. Mourning relatives who’ve lost family members in federal immigration custody are often left to navigate an expensive and confusing process to lay their loved ones to rest back in their home countries. There is rarely any closure or justice for these families. There’s also no solace for the relatives of people who’ve died or disappeared at the U.S.-Mexico border or on their journey to the U.S. 

Jhon Benavides Quintana was one of 12 people who died in ICE custody in fiscal year 2024—the deadliest under President Joe Biden. At least 26 people have died in ICE custody during the Biden administration. 

These deaths are part of Biden’s legacy on immigration. 

Biden was widely criticized by advocates for adopting anti-immigrant measures used during Donald Trump’s first presidency, further eroding due process rights and restricting asylum protections that led to the death and disappearance of thousands of people in the borderlands.

One of the most harmful Trump-era policies was Title 42, a measure that Biden persistently defended and enforced for much of his presidency. Under Title 42, U.S. border authorities blocked and expelled nearly 3 million asylum-seekers at the southern border; thousands of them experienced torture, kidnapping, rape, and other violent attacks while forced to remain in Mexico.

As Biden doubled down on harsher border policies, people who were denied entry and protection at U.S. ports of entry were forced to cross through more remote and dangerous regions of the borderlands. More than 2,700 migrants were confirmed dead between fiscal years 2021 and 2024. In fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol reported a record of nearly 900 deaths along the border. The actual toll is likely much higher, as activists say the figures published by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are unreliable. Thousands of people are still missing in the borderlands, their remains never found or identified. 

“Many have died on their way [through] the Darién [Gap]. Many have been kidnapped and murdered in Mexico. People have been trafficked. … That is a direct result of those U.S. policies, pushing the border more south,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. “We have buried people every single week, every single month, throughout the Biden administration.” 

With Trump’s return to office and renewed threats of mass deportations, heightened detentions, and more restrictions on asylum and immigration protections, activists fear that migrant deaths will continue to soar. 

A spiraling humanitarian crisis

Ahead of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, activists are denouncing the Biden administration for handing over the infrastructure that would allow Trump to carry out what he’s described as the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. Biden broke his own record in fiscal year 2024, deporting more than 271,000 people—the largest number of deportations in nearly a decade, even surpassing Trump’s first term in office. 

Jozef said deportations to Haiti intensified under Biden despite a spiraling humanitarian crisis due to gang violence and political instability. 

“The cruelty of deportation is an act of violence against the Haitian people. That has been a blueprint of the Biden administration [and] should be considered a crime against humanity,” she said. As the Biden administration evacuated U.S. embassy staff in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, officials continued to pack deportation flights full of asylum-seekers, including children. 

In his reelection campaign, Trump targeted the Haitian community, spreading racist lies and disinformation and threatening to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and “bring them back to their country.” (The Biden administration on Jan. 10 extended TPS for 18 months to 900,000 immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine, and Sudan. Haiti was not included, and the program that provides temporary relief from deportation and work authorization will likely face challenges under the incoming Trump administration.)

Jozef also pointed to the Biden administration’s use of CBP One—a mobile app used by the federal agency to manage asylum appointments at ports of entry—as more evidence of the administration’s failure to protect migrants. The app is notorious for systemic technical issues and remains inaccessible to people who don’t have smartphones. Jozef held back tears describing the case of a man who was severely ill and died as he waited for an appointment via the CBP One app.

“He was refused access three times. We were able to advocate on his behalf and had to go to the highest level within CBP to beg for his life. And the day we got the approval, he died,” said Jozef, who has also attended several funerals of Haitian asylum-seekers in Mexico after being denied entry to the U.S. during Biden’s term. “It is so painful.” 

Like other U.S. presidents who, for decades, enforced so-called prevention through deterrence policies, Biden’s government made it harder for asylum-seekers to reach the U.S., pushing migrants into the hands of human smugglers who often abandon people in the middle of the desert or locked inside scorching hot tractor-trailers. 

“Biden is leaving behind a legacy well within the context of policies that we’ve seen since the 1990s and that only generate death and rely on death to try to deter migration,” said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program. “Migrants are having to cross through more remote areas, traveling for longer distances to avoid being detected [by border agents] and farther away from cities and places where they can find safety.”

“Many of these deaths were preventable,” Rios continued. In July, Rios worked with a team to assist the family of a 21-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico, who slipped, hit his head, and died as he attempted to cross the Otay Mountain, the highest summit of the San Ysidro Mountains located in San Diego County, California. This has become an increasingly common route for migrants along the California-Mexico border. Rios said volunteers rescued his body after authorities left him there for four days. “In many cases, it’s difficult to identify the remains because they’ve been burned after being exposed to extreme heat,” Rios said. 

Humanitarian aid groups like Los Armadillos and No More Deaths have led efforts to search for the dead and disappeared, as their families are consumed by the anguish of not knowing what’s happened to their loved ones. 

We are human beings, pushed to migrate due to violence and other situations. Everyone deserves a dignified life for themselves and their families, and it is lamentable that they have to die searching for that.

Alex Ortigoza, co-founder of Los Armadillos

CBP runs a “missing migrant” program, but many humanitarian aid groups have accused Border Patrol of leaving people to die. (CBP declined to comment.) Alex Ortigoza, co-founder of Los Armadillos, said border agents also don’t prioritize the search and rescue of missing people or human remains. “This would create an expense that they don’t want to deal with. They don’t want to help these families,” he said. “We are human beings, pushed to migrate due to violence and other situations. Everyone deserves a dignified life for themselves and their families, and it is lamentable that they have to die searching for that.”

For those who were granted entry to the U.S. by the Biden administration, safety was not guaranteed—not even for children like 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, who died in May 2023 while she and her family were in Border Patrol custody. 

Anadith was detained by Border Patrol with her family for significantly longer than the 72-hour limit allowed by law. When she became sick, border agents ignored her mother’s repeated pleas to take her to a hospital. The family is Garifuna, “and the level of anti-Black racism they received at a federal facility caused the death of an 8-year-old Black girl,” Jozef said. “These systems are rooted in anti-Black racism.”

CBP and the Biden administration have repeatedly refused to release all records related to Anadith’s death as the Texas Civil Rights Project and Haitian Bridge Alliance continue to investigate her case. The groups filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last May.

Daniel Hatoum, a senior supervising attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told Prism that though initially the Biden administration seemed receptive to providing information, overall there’s been a lack of transparency. 

“That sort of petered [out] as immigration became the top-line issue” ahead of the 2024 election, Hatoum said. Anadith’s family will continue to fight for accountability and justice “for this to never happen to anyone else,” he said. (CBP declined to comment on the FOIA lawsuit.)

Ortigoza warned that mass deportations and immigration raids, such as those that took place in Kern County, California, earlier this month, lead to more people going missing and dying along the southern border, as deportees try to return to their families and live in the U.S. With Trump’s proposal to allow ICE raids at churches, schools, and hospitals, “the next four years are going to be tough,” Ortigoza said. “But we are preparing.”

Who will hold the government accountable?

According to ICE’s death report, in May, Jhon Javier Benavides Quintana described feeling “numbness and tingling in his left lower leg, coupled with a painful pulsating left groin mass.” But he was not scheduled for an ultrasound or another medical check-up until June 17, two days after he collapsed while working in the facility’s kitchen and was later pronounced dead. 

Benavides Quintana suffered from health issues stemming from a stab wound for which he had surgery in 2022. New Mexico officials determined his cause of death was a pulmonary thromboembolism, a blood clot in the lung, likely in connection to those health complications. Immigrant rights advocates have for years publicized cases of medical neglect and complaints of abuse at Otero. Organizers say that medical staff likely did not provide Benavides Quintana with the medication and proper treatment he needed, leading to his sudden death. Activists continue to demand an independent autopsy and investigation into his death. (MTC said in a statement to Prism that “medical staff at Otero … provided prompt and appropriate medical care while he was housed at the facility.”)

“I hope the facility where my brother was detained closes after his case. We still do not know whether my brother died of natural causes or due to maltreatment. My brother was in need of medicines and proper care, so we really can’t say if he truly died of natural causes,” his sister Maria said. 

Before Trump’s reelection, the Biden administration in April granted billions of dollars in additional funding to ICE. Despite mounting deaths and reports of gruesome violations, an average of about 37,000 people were detained by ICE each day during Biden’s final year in office. 

“The more people you have in these facilities, the more likely deaths are going to happen,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network. “The conditions in which detention exists really serves to dehumanize people. The priority is never the care of the individual inside, which is why we so strongly believe that detention should end.”

Biden’s 2021 executive order to end the federal government’s use of private prisons didn’t apply to ICE. Some private prisons were actually converted into ICE detention centers, including the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Pennsylvania. Biden also directed ICE to expand its contracts with private prison corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic to operate more immigration detention centers nationwide.

“It is a deadly danger to be placed in a detention center in the United States. There are no guarantees for any kind of protection. The only guarantee is that immigrants will likely wind up extremely sick or dead, in a body bag at a morgue,” said Maru Mora-Villalpando, longtime immigrant rights activist and a community organizer based in Tacoma, Washington, with the group La Resistencia. “Biden’s term in office expanded this machinery.”

Mora-Villalpando has led protests and demands to shut down Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center, where two people died in 2024 alone. 

Charles Leo Daniel, a 61-year-old immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, died at Northwest in March 2024 after being held in solitary confinement for nearly four years. Daniel dealt with severe mental illness. And 36-year-old José Manuel Sánchez Castro died in October 2024 as he experienced fentanyl withdrawals. Rather than transferring the Mexican immigrant to a hospital for emergency care, Northwest officials placed him in the facility’s medical unit, where he was later found unresponsive and face down in his own vomit. In the days before his death, Sánchez Castro described to Northwest medical staff feeling severe pain, chills, dizziness, and nausea. (A statement from GEO Group said its contracted ICE facilities “include around-the-clock access to medical care.”)

“[ICE] knew they didn’t have the adequate medication to treat him, and they left him there,” Mora-Villalpando said.

There are two known active wrongful death lawsuits against CoreCivic and GEO Group, related to in-custody deaths during the Biden administration.

Human life is not prioritized. Health and safety are not prioritized. This enterprise is not set up to protect or preserve human life.

Andrew Free, Lawyer and Independent journalist

“Human life is not prioritized. Health and safety are not prioritized. This enterprise is not set up to protect or preserve human life,” said Andrew Free, a lawyer and independent journalist who investigates ICE and runs the #DetentionKills Substack. 

“There’s a fundamental lack of respect and disregard for the interests of family members and loved ones in the wake of a death,” said Free, who has been involved in several wrongful death lawsuits against ICE over the years. “There are families whose loved ones died seven years ago who are still trying to figure out what happened. Some people are stuck in court fighting for a really long time.” 

In September 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic on behalf of the family of 23-year-old Kesley Vial, who died by suicide while held at the Torrance County Detention Facility. Vial, who was from Brazil, languished in detention for months as his mental health rapidly deteriorated, and ICE repeatedly postponed his deportation. (An ICE spokesperson told Prism that the agency does not comment on pending litigation.)

The ACLU alleged that CoreCivic staff failed to take appropriate precautions and ignored clear signs that Vial was in extreme distress on the day of his death. “Instead, CoreCivic staff allowed him to take a bedsheet to an unoccupied cell he was not assigned to, locked him in that cell alone, and left him there unsupervised for almost 30 minutes. ” the ACLU said in a statement. (A spokesperson for CoreCivic said in a statement that “any death is immediately reported to our government partners and investigated thoroughly and transparently.”)

There was also a wrongful death lawsuit against GEO Group filed in October 2024 by the family of Melvin Ariel Calero Mendoza, a 39-year-old asylum-seeker from Nicaragua who died at the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado in 2022. The lawsuit accuses GEO and Aurora’s sole physician, Dr. Cary Walker, of medical negligence. An autopsy found that Calero Mendoza died from a pulmonary embolism that was likely connected to an untreated toe injury he endured while playing soccer. 

“Barriers to litigation go far beyond simple fear of retaliation. ICE first lies about how a person died. …Then ICE covers up those facts and hides them from families, oversight bodies, and the public,” Free said. “When people seek the information through legal channels, ICE and [the Department of Justice] conspire to resist those [lawsuits].”

As evidence mounts that detention centers are wholly incapable of providing immigrants with adequate health care, the Biden administration has largely ignored calls from families, advocates, and activists to shut down some of the deadliest and most troubled ICE facilities, including the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. At least three people who were detained at Stewart died between 2021 and 2024: Felipe Montes, Salvador Vargas, and Cambric Dennis.

After the Biden administration ordered ICE to stop detaining women at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center amid reports of forced sterilizations, immigration officials simply transferred women to Stewart in 2021. The following year, allegations of sexual abuse by a male nurse at the facility were reportedly suppressed by ICE and CoreCivic officials.

“When abuses were happening under the Trump administration, Democrats in Congress were sounding the alarm, which was definitely important to do,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director for the Atlanta-based Project South. “But why aren’t they speaking up when the same was happening under Biden? If they had followed the same principles in trying to hold the government accountable, perhaps extremely awful places like Stewart would have been shut down a long time ago. Now going into the Trump administration, it is just horrifying to think what could be coming.”