ICE Kills More Americans Than Illegal Immigrants

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ICE Kills More Americans than Illegal Immigrants

I posted the above on Threads, and some folks questioned whether this could actually be true. So let me run you through the math. Granted, some of these numbers are best estimates. Undercounting is probably happening on both sides of the argument. But when you see how outlandishly far apart the outcome is, you’ll realize that the statement is absolutely true.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is roughly 14 million, by Pew, in 2023. Or 16 million by CIS in 2025. A Cato analysis of murders by undocumented immigrants in Texas found 473 convictions between 2013 and 2022. The same study calculated 2.2 convictions per 100,000 undocumented immigrants per year, using total population as a denominator. (Compare that to 3.0 for U.S.-born residents.) We’ve long known that Americans are more deadly than illegal immigrants, but what about comparing to ICE agents?

The Cato study looked at a roughly ten year period in Texas. Extrapolating to the overall US population of undocumented immigrants, you get roughly 300 convicted murders per year. That sounds like a lot, right?! Enough to get really angry and be a full-time racist on social media and at every Thanksgiving dinner. Almost enough to ignore the fact that Americans born in the United States kill far more than this every year. Keep in mind that 14-16 million people is a far bigger number than the number of ICE agents walking around with masks and guns. We are looking at whether a single ICE agent is more dangerous than a single illegal immigrant. Who is more likely to kill you?

In January of 2026, ICE had grown to about 22,000 staff. That’s all staff, not just armed enforcement. There are two ways that giving this number is a benefit to ICE and works against my thesis (I try to do that with every number selected, to give the counter-argument as much power here as possible. You’ll see that it doesn’t dent my thesis one bit). One way this helps the pro-ICE argument is that total staff undercounts how dangerous the enforcement arm has become. It also inflates the numbers by going with the rapidly growing and recent estimate, which highlights how much more dangerous ICE was in previous years on a per-capita basis.

I should also point out here that similar enforcement under Biden and Obama also resulted in unnecessary deaths. This isn’t an anti-Trump rant. I don’t wear pictures of Biden or Obama or fly flags with their faces on them. I don’t belong to a cult, and if you’re in one, it’s hard to imagine that other people aren’t. This is a rant against racism, against treating civil violations as felonies, and against thinking a masked madman can be judge, jury, and executioner in a functioning civilization.

The ICE list, which is assembled from reports and documented cases, counted 68 deaths in ICE or CBP custody between January of 2025 and October of 2026. Four people have been shot by traffic stops by ICE in the last year alone. So roughly 59 deaths per 100,000 workforce-years for ICE, compared to roughly 2.2 homicides per year for undocumented immigrants. Almost a 30X higher rate.

A lot of these numbers would have to be WAY off to think undocumented immigrants are more dangerous than ICE. You’d also have to be insane to think a masked, armed mob should be shooting people for civil violations, while also supporting a president convicted of more than 30 felonies and sexual assault. Like, seriously crazy. Fucking bonkers, even.

The number of actual deaths caused by inhumane immigration enforcement is likely much higher. Women are getting pregnant in detention. The only men around them are guards. People are dying who are not getting reported, including US citizens who are being sent to countries they’ve never been to before. Children are sitting in courtrooms by themselves. Families are being ripped apart. Supporting ICE is supporting rape, murder, and the destruction of households. It’s the most inhumane thing we are currently doing, the least Christ-like, and you are in a demented, evil cult if you are unable to see any of this.

By the way, do you know what the definition of a concentration camp is? A concentration camp is a prison or facility where a government or military detains civilians, political prisoners, or targeted demographic groups without trial, usually under harsh conditions.

I’m not sorry if any of this hurts your feelings. Be better.

A declaration of a cause which impels us towards separation???

Hugh, I’ve been on daca in US for a while now. My wife is a Brazilian immigrant. We have a boy. Some years back a crazy maga guy tried to kill us because we are immigrants, assaulted me with a metal pipe. After we moved from there, the horrors begun with ice. It’s been very stressful. Bottom line is, as a fellow writer, and human being, it’s really important when people like you speak up, thank you.

Unbelievable that we still have this criminal administration in charge. I fear for us all.

Jocelyn Nungaray, 12 years old gang raped and murdered by two men here illegally from Venezuela. Google it, at least you admit you support 12 year olds being raped and murdered

thank you as always, Hugh, for using your voice & platform for this issue. the slow creep of fascism is quickening; you always think it won’t happen to you, it will happen to “others”, until it is knocking on your own door or shoots you in the middle of a parking lot.

you really nailed it: “This is a rant against racism, against treating civil violations as felonies, and against thinking a masked madman can be judge, jury, and executioner in a functioning civilization.”

my husband is an US immigrant and back in his home country of Australia, he says that immigrant issues are a bureaucratic issue, not one where people with guns & “authority” get to decide if you get to live or die. Let alone the horrific conditions where people are being locked up or even worse, deported to a country that they’ve never even stepped foot in. WHAT ARE WE DOING???

Just remember, you have more in common with the immigrant who comes to America for a better life, the person who cleans your hotel rooms, cooks your food at restaurant, sorts your trash, slaughters the animals for you to eat, or any other number of grunt, back breaking, low paying jobs, than you do with any pathetic billionaire who is hoarding their wealth, effectively stealing your wealth from you due to 40 years of stagnant wages & them paying next to nothing in taxes. please I am begging everyone to remember that. They’re not stealing your jobs, billionaires and the Epstein class are.

Thank you for going through the math and sharing facts. I have not always been proud of the actions of my country, but I have never been quite so ashamed and horrified.

Cue the folks who are going to chastise you for being “political,” and refuse to read your books or watch SILO anymore.

As a renounced, former American, I have to say there is no way I could think of returning to visit with such an unruly and unconstitutional police force like ICE running free. It is shameful that so few speak up and even more shameful how much of the population doesn’t care!

The upcoming midterm elections will be a pivotal point. Do people come out and vote out do ⅓ of eligible voters stay at home? If they do go out and vote do their votes get manipulated like they have now shown happened in 2024? And if their is blatant manipulation will anyone stand up or will they simply say “oh well, what can we do?”

With a Gestapo like police force that ICE is, the USA is no longer the land of the free!

I was really into your writing until I read the above.

Actors act

Authors write

LEOs enforce existing laws

Governors govern

Farmers farm

Educators educate

I gave all my Silo books to a liberal friend, delete them from my devices, removed them from Apple TV.

At least your comment did not get deleted or censored outright – unlike mine. Maybe Mr Howey had an especially libertarian day yesterday?

People need to speak up when the situation calls for it, regardless of their profession. Writers are communicators, and he’s communicating something terrible that is happening in this country.

And as for your use of false equivalence & tautology, it only makes you look like you’re not good at understanding what people can and should do in this world.

More so, it makes you literally complicit with evil by defending ICE’s actions. It always perplexes me how people can get so hateful and spiteful against others they’ve never met.

hats off to you for publicly expressing your—possibly unpopular—opinion (facts, rather…).

Quoting from above: “Authors write.” Yes, they do. But no one said they’re only allowed to write fiction. Sometimes things happening in the real world are more important.

Personally, I never understood why mankind needs to be so horribly self-destructive, taking a pencil and drawing artificial lines on that small globe we all live on, calling them “borders” and fighting about them with their lives. Just imagine … under different circumstances, the guy on the other side of the fence could possibly be your best friend, and now you’re gonna say “Sorry, I have to shoot you dead.” Leaving his family without a husband, father, son… It could be you.

We’re all Terrans, living on this little third planet from the sun. Shouldn’t we instead try making it a better place to live on? Help each other out? Be supportive, friends even?

The moon we look at is the same for all of us. Sadly, Earth isn’t.

Well said. The conceptual evolution of property needs work. Found it interesting that Jefferson switched out property and replaced it with happiness. Hmmm. Pareto’s observations about the tendency towards concentration of wealth remains a critically important issue for our kind. I get the sense that the current crop of our “vital few” rulers has dissipated to the point they can longer experience love in their hearts.

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Thank you for writing this Hugh. It’s difficult to stand up for common sense and humanity when those things no longer seem to have a shared meaning depending on what polarized “tribe” one professes to belong to. Progressives will attack you for having a nuanced, forward-thinking perspective on A.I., and now MAGA will hate you for expressing a rational and humane view on immigration. Please know that there are many of us out here who don’t follow a “cult of personality” either,

and just want some sanity to prevail before more people get hurt. At the end of the day it only benefits the 0.1% class to have the rest of us at each other’s throats over artificial scarcity and “blood affinity.” For all those insisting you should “shut up and write,” well, isn’t that a contradiction in terms? To write one’s honest thoughts about what it means to be human — and what happens when “categories” of humans are excluded as a precondition for being abused and brutalized — necessitates not shutting up in the first place. So, please continue writing, and don’t ever shut up. We know what happened in history before when “no one was left to speak out” because everyone one by one was silenced and disappeared.

The 0.1% are so high on ai that they’ve lost their minds. Billionaire bunkers don’t save humanity, sobriety does. A lesson our sun and stars repeat for us over and over again. Wonder if Hugh is aware of ECDO theory?

Nice article, especially the part about consistency. I really enjoy this kind of content, hope you share more like this.

Yeah, yeah, ICE bad. But even if you hate ICE, would it not be more interesting to compare