ICE Detention Kills Afghanistan War Veteran Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, 12th Custodial Death This Year
Immigrants in ICE detention now dying at the steady rate of one every six days since January 1, projected to reach over 60 deaths by end of year.
ICE announced today that Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, a 41-year-old veteran of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, was surrounded and arrested in his vehicle in front of his children on Friday and taken to the ICE Dallas Field Office processing hold room. Less than a day later, he was dead. The fact that Paktiawal survived the Taliban but couldn’t survive ICE paints a dark picture of the morbid effectiveness of institutional violence.
With now 12 deaths since January 1, ICE detention continues to take the life of a detained person once every six days on average. At this rate, at least one more immigrant will die in detention before many Americans go to church again on Sunday. Death in detention is no longer a shocking rarity that drew genuine concern from the agency. Death in detention becoming a predictable and normalized part of ICE operations while Congress and most of the American public appears unaware or indifferent.
In a video post online, Shawn VanDiver from #AfghanEvac said “We have a major problem in this country. We’re going to be talking about this. We are not going let Nazeer’s death be in vain.” #AfghanEvac is a volunteer run, non-profit organization connecting organizations and people working to help honor our promise to Afghans who served with American soldiers in the war. Learn more about Shawn’s and #AfghanEvac’s incredible work at my recent post here: Reflections on the #AfghanEvac Global Briefing.
ICE’s official announcement is available online here. Learn more at the Reuter’s article online.
The searchable and sortable table below includes 411 known detention deaths since the start of the Trump administration, and seven more below. Scroll below for other ICE-related deaths not included in this dataset.
The following people were killed by federal immigration agents outside of detention during the Trump administration and are not included in the table above.
Jaime Alanis Garcia — Killed July 10, 2025, during a farm raid in Camarillo, California, while fleeing ICE agents. (The Guardian)
Josué Castro Rivera, 25, Honduras — Struck by traffic on Interstate 264 in Norfolk, Virginia, on October 23, 2025, while fleeing ICE agents before being taken into custody. (Associated Press)
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, 37, El Salvador, and Miguel Ángel García Medina, 31, Mexico — Both killed September 24, 2025, when a civilian gunman opened fire on a government van outside the ICE field office in Dallas, Texas. While in ICE custody at the time, their deaths resulted from an act of targeted violence rather than enforcement actions or conditions of detention. (CBS News)
Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, U.S. citizen — Fatally shot by an ICE officer on South Padre Island, Texas, on March 15, 2025, while agents were assisting local police at a traffic scene. The federal government’s involvement was not initially disclosed. (KUT)
Renée Nicole Macklin Good, 37, U.S. citizen — Fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, while in her vehicle during a large immigration enforcement operation. (CNN)
Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, U.S. citizen — Shot and killed by two Customs and Border Protection officers in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026, while observing and directing traffic during enforcement operations. (NPR)
The original post inaccurately said 42; the total for this dataset is 41.
Not that get any attention. But NEVER GIVE UP!! Be loud and louder about this travesty these lives are valuable and their families deserve answers!!!
Thank you for consolidating and sharing this information. Please add Silverio Villegas Gonzales and Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdes, both of whom died while fleeing ICE. Gonzales’ murder is similar to that of Renee Good (though did not get the public outrage) in that DHS lied, saying he tried to run agents over with his car. When surveillance footage showed this to be false, DHS doubled down on their lies.