ICE Reports 15th Detained Death of 2026 at Miami Correctional Center in Indiana
Tuan Van Bui, the son of a U.S. soldier in Vietnam, died in detention on April 1. He is the second person to die at Miami CC this year and continues the morbid pattern of one ICE death every 6.0 days.
Tuan Van Bui, a 55-year-old man originally from Vietnam, died on April 1 at the Miami Correctional Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana, according to an ICE press release. Tuan Van Bui is the 15th detained death since January 1, 2026, and the 46th person to die in federal immigration custody during the current Trump administration. If Miami Correction Center rings a bell, it’s because Lorth Sim, a Cambodian national, also died at this facility just weeks ago in February.
In my post about the previous detained death, I said the following:
The rate of one death every 6.0 days this calendar year continues to hold with remarkably morbid precision. I can’t explain it, but it’s the weirdest, creepiest number I’ve seen in a long time. You rarely see things like this in immigration data, but it could not be more predictable right now: one immigrant dies in custody every six days.
Not roughly one death per week. Not roughly one death every 6 days. One death every 6-point-zero days.
Does anyone want to do the math with me on this one? January 1 to April 1 is 90 days. This is the 15th death of the year.
To repeat. Not roughly one death per week. Not roughly one death every 6 days. One death every 6-point-zero days.
Perhaps this is worth a longer discussion somewhere else, but let me touch on this here. This is a perfectly morbid example of what social scientists mean when they talk about systemic violence. There are emergent patterns in the harm caused by systems that are built on the foundations of marginalization and neglect, patterns that are often felt by people who are targeted and ignored by people in power. Yet there are times when the data itself punctuates the effects of systemic power in such a clear way that it is difficult to ignore. This is one of those times. ICE detention has become a horror movie on par with The Ring: we do not know precisely who will die, but someone will die in detention every six days. That is what systemic violence looks like, and if you really want to dive deep, I’d recommend Economies of Abandonment by Elizabeth Povinelli or Achille Mbembe’s work on necropolitics.
ICE’s response to detained deaths is a case study in how systems respond to the predictable consequences of their own willful (e.g., Alex Pretti) or neglectful (e.g., Tuan Van Bui) systems of dehumanization. ICE tries to weasel out of responsibility by making excuses for why every death is really the fault of the deceased rather than the predictable outcome of a civil detention system with no oversight and no guardrails. It’s not just detained deaths, either. Just listen to my conversation with Zain Lakhani about how ICE is treating detained pregnant women. For a longer discussion of what the official detention death toll leaves out, read my recent article “Beyond the Official ICE Detention Death Count.”
Back to the details of Tuan Van Bui. The Miami Correctional Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana, where he died is not a longstanding federal detention facility. The first group of ICE detainees arrived at Miami Correctional in early October 2025. Indiana officials approved $16 million for facility upgrades in September after the state signed an agreement allowing up to 1,000 immigrants to be held there. The state currently receives a daily payment of $291 per detainee, almost four times the $75 daily per-person cost for state inmates held there.
The facility data from Detention Reports as of February 5, 2026 shows that the facility’s population grew quickly to 577 people, all male. The facility type is listed as IGSA (Intergovernmental Service Agreement), meaning ICE is renting space from the Indiana Department of Correction. The average length of stay is 34 days. The facility was used to hold many people arrested during ICE’s controversial and at least partly illegal enforcement action titled Operation Midway Blitz.
My ongoing concern over whether facilities are able to meet the needs of rapidly-growing populations of people held in civil (not criminal) detention is reflected a recent congressional oversight visit by Rep. Lauren Underwood. Rep. Underwood found a pattern of systemic problems affecting the people detained at the Miami facility. Detainees said that ICE's Online Detainee Locator System failed to notify families of their whereabouts in a timely way, that medical care was delayed and medication refills could take up to two months, and that ICE staff had lost one detainee's belongings including personal photographs.
Basic needs were also poorly met. The only footwear provided were plastic clogs worn in all conditions including winter weather, breakfast was sometimes served as early as 3:30 AM disrupting sleep, and detainees reported being unable to purchase stamps or print legal materials despite staff claims to the contrary, which raises serious concerns about their ability to access legal representation and pursue their cases.
Whether a full investigation will find any link between the detention conditions and Tuan Van Bui’s death remain to be seen, but ICE’s official accounts of detainee deaths are not transparent and do not always hold up to later scrutiny.
There is another part of this story that provides us with something of a teachable moment. ICE’s press release mentions that Tuan Van Bui entered the US in 1990 as an AM-1 immigrant. This is not a common topic of conversation these days, but the AM visa is a visa category for Amerasian children established by Congress under the Amerasian Homecoming Act. The Amerasian Homecoming Act allowed Vietnamese Amerasians born between January 1, 1962 and January 1, 1976 to apply for immigrant visas, children born in Vietnam of U.S. citizen fathers. They were often discriminated against back in Vietnam because of this.
About 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives entered the United States under this act. Very few people still enter on this visa each year, but it’s more than zero. Tuan Van Bui did not enter illegally across the southern border, he was admitted precisely because the U.S. government acknowledged a specific obligation to him and thousands like him, rooted in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
ICE officials said that Bui was ordered removed by an immigration judge in 2005 and that he had never applied for U.S. citizenship despite residing in the country for many years. That may be accurate as far as it goes, but it leaves out the complexity of why a person admitted under the Amerasian Homecoming Act might not have naturalized; the legal barriers, the instability, the lack of resources that often characterized the resettlement of this population.
A table of detained deaths during the current Trump administration is available below.
See you in six days.
My son died at this prison in 2022. The gang activity is horrific. It is one of the most corrupt prisons in the state of Indiana. Please investigate further. The records will show you how may suspicious deaths have occurred at this prison and you will also find out that emergency services will not even attempt to enter this prison when an inmate stabbing, death, or other emergency happens. It is too dangerous.
Sad to say but these men were probably safer in the country they fled 😢