TEXAS — A 33-year-old pregnant detainee began banging her head against a wall at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas four days before Christmas, prompting guards to call 911. The woman refused to enter a vehicle that guards attempted to use to transport her to the hospital and was later taken to a local hospital.

ICE declined to respond to questions about the case. Over the past year, more than 1,000 emergency requests were made from six immigration detention centers, including 28 emergency calls involving serious incidents of self-harm. In those incidents, a detainee swallowed a razor blade, another drank cleaning chemicals, and at least three detainees cut their own wrists. The six jurisdictions that responded with detailed emergency call logs were located in Washington, California, Georgia, Michigan and Texas.

Five deaths by suicide have been reported in ICE detention facilities so far this year, the highest number in two decades. Over the four years of the previous administration, there were two suicides in ICE custody. The total number of deaths in custody in 2025 tripled from the previous year. The most recent suicide occurred earlier this month at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, which failed to complete suicide prevention training for all staff, according to an ICE inspection from March 2025.

"Self-harm is a sign that something is going very wrong," said Dr. Sanjay Basu, an epidemiologist and physician at the University of California, San Francisco. "If you see a spike, it indicates there is a much larger group of people suffering mental health challenges. These deaths are highly preventable if ICE adhered to suicide prevention standards such as early assessments and regular monitoring of suicidal detainees," Basu said.

The number of detainees in ICE custody has doubled under the Trump administration, with nearly 60,000 people now held, compared with roughly 34,000 during the Biden administration. Immigrants in ICE custody are staying on average 50 days, up from 36 days. More than 20,000 people in ICE custody have no criminal background aside from violations of immigration law.

"The issue is not just the terrible god-awful conditions in the detention centers, it's the feeling of not knowing when or even if people will get out of those conditions," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration attorney whose client was released from ICE custody after 11 months.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said: "Consistent with data over the last decade, as of April 30, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population. As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens — including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives."