THE REGISTRY

On the Deaths ICE Will Not Count Together

Last Updated: January 13, 2026 at 2:05am CST

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
— Rabindranath Tagore

I am typing with hands that shake.
Not from uncertainty.
From recognition.

We should not need a running catalog of people killed by federal enforcement. We should not be assembling names the government refuses to count together. We should not be doing archival work while officials stage press conferences in tailored blazers and refuse to release names, timelines, footage.

But here we are.

Keith Porter Jr. died on New Year’s Eve. An off-duty ICE agent killed him in Northridge, California. Father to a daughter. Shot by his neighbor. The agent’s name has not been released. The investigation remains “ongoing.”

I learned about him late, which is its own form of violence. To discover after the fact. To find out days later that a child now carries loss she did not consent to, while coverage moved past the story before most people heard it begin.

By contrast, Renee Nicole Good was national news within hours. Her death moved through every network. Donations passed one million dollars almost immediately. I support that. I refuse the false logic that grief must be competed for, that care must be rationed.

But velocity is not neutral. Speed reveals who the country is prepared to recognize without hesitation.

Some deaths arrive already cleared for public empathy. Others are delayed by qualifiers, by investigations, by the quiet suggestion that more information might complicate the sympathy. This is not media failure. This is policy outcome.

There is no comprehensive public registry of people killed by ICE agents. No centralized count. No mandated disclosure.¹

Deaths are scattered across jurisdictions, years, classifications. Some are called “medical events.” Some vanish inside internal reviews. Some are reported only in Spanish-language outlets. Some families are too exhausted, too afraid, or too isolated to push.

This fragmentation is not oversight. It is design.

So this piece will do what federal enforcement will not. It will hold names.

The list is not complete. It will never be complete, because the apparatus that produces these deaths depends on incompleteness. But it will be verified. It will be updated. And it will stay open.

If you know of cases, documentation, names that belong here, send them. Verification matters. I will add what can be confirmed.

This is not crowdsourced outrage. This is refusal to forget.

A Living Record

Deaths Connected to ICE, DHS, Border Patrol, and Federal Immigration Enforcement
Use of force, custody deaths, or direct enforcement actions

This list exists because opacity has been declared acceptable.

Recent Shootings and Enforcement Deaths (2025–2026)

• Keith Porter Jr. (Dec 31, 2025) — Northridge, California
  Off-duty ICE agent. Witnesses present. Father to a daughter. Agent’s name withheld. Investigation pending.

• Renee Nicole Good (Jan 7, 2026) — Minneapolis, Minnesota
  Killed by on-duty ICE agent Jonathan Ross during enforcement action. U.S. citizen, writer, poet. Mother to a six-year-old.

• Silverio Villegas González (Sept 12, 2025) — Franklin Park, Illinois
  Killed during ICE traffic stop.

Recent Deaths in ICE Detention (Dec 2025–Jan 2026)

2025 was the deadliest year on record in ICE custody. Over 30 deaths. Seven in December alone.²

• Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 42, Honduras (Jan 5, 2026) — Joe Corley Detention Facility, Texas

• Nenko Stanev Gantchev, 56, Bulgaria (Dec 15, 2025) — North Lake Correctional Facility, Michigan

• Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, 46, Eritrea (Dec 14, 2025) — Moshannon Valley Correctional Facility, Pennsylvania

• Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, 39, Nicaragua (Dec 14, 2025) — Adams County Correctional Center, Mississippi

• Jean Wilson Brutus, 41, Haiti (Dec 12, 2025) — Delaney Hall Detention Facility, New Jersey

• Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, 48, Pakistan (Dec 6, 2025) — Prairieland Detention Facility, Texas

• Pete Sumalo Montejo, 72, Philippines (Dec 5, 2025) — Montgomery Processing Center, Texas

• Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, Guatemala (Dec 3, 2025) — El Paso Camp East Montana, Texas

Other Recent Cases

• Carlos Jimenez, U.S. citizen (Oct 2025) — Ontario, California
  Shot at by immigration officer while heading to work at a food bank.

• Marimar Martinez, U.S. citizen (Oct 2025)
  Shot at by ICE agent after crash. Agent claimed self-defense.

Historical Cases

• Anastasio Hernández Rojas (May 31, 2010) — San Diego, California
  Beaten, kicked, and tased repeatedly by Border Patrol agents while handcuffed. Died three days later. San Diego coroner ruled his death a homicide. Five broken ribs, damaged spine, bruising across his body. He was 42. Father of five U.S. citizen children. No agents prosecuted.

• Sergio Adrian Hernández-Guereca, 15 (June 7, 2010) — El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border
  Teenager shot and killed by Border Patrol agent firing across the border. Shot while standing on Mexican soil.

• José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, 16 (Oct 10, 2012) — Nogales, Arizona/Sonora border
  Shot 10 times in the back by Border Patrol agent firing across the border. Agent claimed rocks were being thrown. Agent tried for second-degree murder. Acquitted.

• Esequiel Hernández Jr., 18 (May 20, 1997) — Redford, Texas
  U.S. citizen. High school student. Shot and killed by U.S. Marines on drug patrol while herding his family’s goats. First American civilian killed by U.S. military on native soil since Kent State. Marine who killed him was cleared by two grand juries.

• Claudia Patricia Gómez González, 20 (May 23, 2018) — Rio Bravo, Texas
  Shot in the head by Border Patrol agent shortly after crossing. Graduate with accounting degree. Came to the U.S. seeking work. Border Patrol initially claimed she attacked agents with blunt objects, then revised the account. Agent never named. No charges filed.

• Roxana Hernández, 33 (May 25, 2018) — Cibola County Correctional Center, New Mexico
  Transgender woman from Honduras. Died in ICE custody from AIDS-related complications after weeks without antiretroviral medication. HIV-positive status was known to both CBP and ICE. Medical standards required immediate treatment. Treatment was not provided.

• Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejía, 57 (May 6, 2020) — Otay Mesa Detention Center, California
  First person to die of COVID-19 in ICE custody. Had lived in the U.S. for 40 years after fleeing El Salvador’s civil war. Had diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems. Judge denied his bond release on April 15, 2020. Three weeks later he died. Detained since January. Complained of symptoms for weeks before receiving medical attention.

• Johnathan Liddell, 45 (Feb 2019) — Lithia Springs, Georgia
  Shot and killed by off-duty ICE agent Othello Jones in Walmart parking lot. Liddell had a pellet gun in his vehicle. No charges filed.

Pending Verification

Two recent deaths are documented but remain unverified pending additional information:

• Mexican citizen, Dec 11, 2025 — fatally shot by Border Patrol while fleeing

• 38-year-old from Mexico, Nov 2025 — shot during traffic stop after allegedly dragging officer

These cases are listed to acknowledge their occurrence while verification continues.

(Additional names will be added as verified.)

Context

Since 2010, at least 356 people have died as a result of an encounter with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.³

Since Trump’s second term began in January 2025: 16 shooting incidents involving ICE agents. Four deaths. Seven injuries. These numbers are likely undercounted.⁴

No Border Patrol or ICE agent has ever been convicted of criminal wrongdoing while on duty.⁵

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A Prayer for What Continues

There is a way the dead stay.

Not in memory alone.
Not in photographs or litigation or lists like these.

They stay in the fact that we cannot stop saying their names. In the way Keith Porter’s daughter will one day need to know her father was seen, that people bore witness, that his death was not permitted to float into bureaucratic language and vanish.

They stay in the eighteen years Esequiel Hernández lived before Marines tracked him through the desert he knew better than they ever would. In the accounting degree Claudia Patricia Gómez González earned, the first in her family, before a bullet ended what she came here to build.

They stay in Anastasio Hernández Rojas crying for help in Spanish while handcuffed, while twenty agents stood over him, while someone in the crowd kept recording because they understood: if no one sees this, it never happened. If it never happened, it will happen again.

They stay in every person who reads this and refuses to look away.

This is not about closure. There is no such thing. Roxana Hernández died without the medication that could have kept her alive. Carlos Escobar Mejía’s judge denied his release three weeks before COVID-19 killed him. José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was sixteen years old when ten bullets entered his back.

Closure is a lie we tell ourselves when the truth is too heavy to hold.

So we hold it anyway.

We hold that Renee Nicole Good was a writer, a poet, a mother. That her six-year-old had a parent who mattered, who wrote, who lived until the morning she didn’t. We hold that the agent’s name is Jonathan Ross, that he had been involved in a similar incident six months earlier, that the investigation is not pending—the facts are already here.

We hold that the government counts its own dead meticulously. Every ICE agent lost. Every Border Patrol officer. Their names on websites. Their service honored.

But the people they kill are scattered across jurisdictions and years like evidence someone hoped would decompose before anyone could assemble it into pattern.

We assemble it anyway.

Because this is what love looks like when the state decides certain lives don’t merit counting. Love as archive. Love as insistence. Love as the refusal to let their names become case numbers, their deaths become “incidents,” their children become footnotes.

There are more names coming. You know this. I know this. We are typing this in real time, updating as we learn, as families speak, as footage emerges, as the apparatus continues to do what it was built to do.

And still.

Still, we will say: Keith Porter Jr. Renee Nicole Good. Esequiel Hernández. Anastasio Hernández Rojas. José Antonio Elena Rodríguez. Claudia Patricia Gómez González. Roxana Hernández. Carlos Escobar Mejía.

We will say their names until our hands stop shaking.

And then we will say them still.

Not because it brings them back.
Because it proves they were here.
Because it proves we saw.

Because the people who depend on our forgetting depend on our exhaustion, our distraction, our eventual surrender to the too-muchness of it all.

But grief is not a resource that depletes.

It is the thing that keeps us human in a system designed to make us numb.

So let this list grow if it must.
Let it be updated, corrected, expanded.

Let it become the registry the government refuses to keep.

And let every name here be a prayer someone speaks when the news moves on.
Let every name be proof that death is not the end of mattering.
Let every name be the thing their children search for when they need to know their people were seen, were mourned, were counted.

Not by the state that killed them.
By us.

By anyone who understands that a country that will not count its dead has already decided who counts as living.

They are here.
In this text.
In your reading.
In the fact that you cannot forget them now.

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This list should not exist. That it does is an indictment.

While families become archivists of their own loss, the rest of us are shown performance. Officials styled for cameras. Investigations that stretch into years or never conclude. Names withheld. Footage sealed. Language designed to diffuse rather than clarify.

We do not need another press conference. We do not need explanations that arrive only after public pressure. We need names released. We need footage made public. We need accountability that does not require begging.

These were not abstractions. They had birthdays. They had people who knew exactly where they sat, how they laughed, what made them hesitate. Some had children who will grow up inside this silence, carrying absences they did not choose and should never have been asked to carry.

I am writing this because awareness is not passive observation. It is sustained attention where power depends on drift. It is repeating names after the algorithm decides the story is over. It is refusing the comfort of believing this is rare, isolated, under control.

They had names before headlines. They had names before classifications. They had names before any of this.

And I will keep writing them until the state that killed them starts counting.

Let that be enough—for now.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

I started this piece because I was angry that I learned Keith Porter Jr.’s name late. I am finishing it different than I began.

Something happens when you spend days reading autopsy reports, watching your search terms shift from “ICE shooting” to “died in custody” to “father of five.” When you learn that Esequiel Hernández was herding goats. That Claudia had just graduated. That Carlos complained of symptoms for weeks.

You cannot unknow that Anastasio was tased while handcuffed, that someone filmed it, that the footage existed for two years before anyone saw it. You cannot unknow that Roxana’s HIV status was documented, that the medication existed, that she died anyway.

I thought I was making a list. I was wrong. I was learning names. I was reading about someone’s brother, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother who visits the grave every week and will until she can’t anymore.

There is a moment in this kind of work where you realize you are not documenting something that happened. You are creating the only place where these names exist together. The only registry. Because the government will not.

That responsibility is heavier than I understood when I started typing.

I cannot unknow Keith Porter Jr.’s daughter exists. I cannot unknow that she will grow up Googling her father’s name, looking for proof that he mattered, that people saw, that his death was not just filed away in some jurisdiction’s cold case system.

This piece will be updated as new names emerge, as families come forward, as documentation surfaces. It will live as long as I can keep it alive. That is not a promise. That is what happens when you learn that the alternative is silence.

If you are reading this because you lost someone, I am sorry. I am sorry this list exists. I am sorry you had to search for their name to find it here instead of on a government registry where it should be.

I cannot give you justice. I can only give you witness.

And I will keep giving it until I can’t.

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TO SUBMIT NAMES OR DOCUMENTATION

If you have information about deaths connected to ICE, CBP, or federal immigration enforcement, please send:

• Full name of deceased

• Date and location

• Agency involved

• Available documentation

• Your relationship to the case (optional)

All submissions will be verified before inclusion. Sources will be protected.

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SOURCES & METHODOLOGY

Primary Sources

This registry is compiled from verified reports including: The Trace, Southern Border Communities Coalition, Freedom for Immigrants, NBC News, CNN, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Intercept, Human Rights Watch, ACLU, Arizona Daily Star, San Diego Union-Tribune, BuzzFeed News, and other documented sources. All deaths listed have been cross-referenced across multiple sources.

Scope

This list focuses on deaths directly resulting from federal immigration enforcement actions (shootings, use of force) and deaths in federal immigration custody. It does not include deaths at the border from exposure, dehydration, or other causes not directly attributable to enforcement actions, though those deaths are also numerous and documented elsewhere by organizations like the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

Verification Standard

Each entry requires:
(1) official agency acknowledgment,
(2) multiple credible news sources, or
(3) documented advocacy organization records with corroborating evidence.

Living Document

This registry will be updated as new information emerges, families come forward, or documentation becomes available.

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DETAILED SOURCE NOTES:

Keith Porter Jr.
Department of Homeland Security statement, January 1, 2026. The off-duty ICE agent’s name has not been publicly released by federal authorities as of this publication. Multiple witness accounts reported by ABC News.

Renee Nicole Good
ICE agent Jonathan Ross identified through court records by Star Tribune, January 8, 2026. Ross was previously involved in a June 17, 2025 incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, where he was dragged by a vehicle during a traffic stop. GoFundMe campaign for Good’s family closed January 9, 2026, after raising $1.5 million. Full case details: Wikipedia: Killing of Renee Good.

2025 Detention Deaths
All names, dates, and facilities verified through Freedom for Immigrants’ “Mourning Our Losses” database and ICE detention death reports, cross-referenced with facility records and Freedom for Immigrants statement, January 8, 2026.

Anastasio Hernández Rojas
Death ruled a homicide by San Diego County Medical Examiner. Autopsy findings documented in Inter-American Commission on Human Rights case file, April 2025. See: U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, May 19, 2025. Additional coverage: Southern Border Communities Coalition; NNIRR; Wikipedia: Death of Anastasio Hernández-Rojas.

Cross-Border Shootings (Sergio Adrian Hernández-Guereca, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez)
Hernández v. Mesa, 589 U.S. ___ (2020): Supreme Court ruled families of cross-border shooting victims cannot sue Border Patrol agents in U.S. courts. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz tried for second-degree murder in José Antonio’s death; acquitted April 2018. See: Arizona Daily Star; Courthouse News Service, November 13, 2025; PBS Frontline, September 20, 2013.

Esequiel Hernández Jr.
Corporal Clemente Bañuelos cleared by federal grand jury and Presidio County grand jury, August 1997. Shooting led to Defense Secretary William Cohen suspending military border patrols. Sources: Wikipedia: Esequiel Hernández Jr.; PBS POV: “The Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez”, 2008; San Antonio Express-News, May 16, 2017; The Big Bend Sentinel, May 25, 2022; Jacobin.

Claudia Patricia Gómez González
U.S. Customs and Border Protection revised its account twice. Initial statement (May 23, 2018) claimed she and others “attacked the officer with blunt objects.” Revised statement (May 25, 2018) said group “allegedly assaulted” and “rushed the agent” with no mention of weapons. ACLU of Texas filed $100 million wrongful death claim May 23, 2019. Sources: CNN, May 27, 2018; BuzzFeed News, May 24, 2019; Marie Claire, May 1, 2019; Wikipedia: Killing of Claudia Gómez González.

Roxana Hernández
Autopsy by New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, April 2019, confirmed death from AIDS-related complications. ICE’s 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards require antiretroviral treatment per CDC guidelines. CDC has recommended immediate antiretroviral treatment for all HIV-positive individuals since 2012. Sources: NBC News (autopsy report), April 17, 2019; NBC News (initial report), May 30, 2018; CNN (wrongful death claim), November 27, 2018; CNN (initial report), May 31, 2018; The Advocate, May 29, 2018.

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejía
Immigration Judge Lee O’Connor denied bond April 15, 2020; Escobar Mejía died May 6, 2020. First COVID-19 death in ICE custody. Sources: San Diego Union-Tribune, May 8, 2020; The Intercept, May 24, 2020; Newsweek, May 7, 2020; Interfaith Immigration Coalition, May 8, 2020.

Johnathan Liddell
Killed by off-duty ICE agent Othello Jones, February 2019, Lithia Springs, Georgia. Douglas County District Attorney Ryan Leonard declined to press charges, stating “This was a justified shooting.” Source: The Trace and Business Insider investigation, August 2024.

Statistical Context
356 deaths from CBP encounters (2010-2024): Southern Border Communities Coalition, “Border Lens: Abuse of Power and Its Consequences”, updated November 2025.

16 shooting incidents, 4 deaths, 7 injuries (January 2025-January 2026): Gun Violence Archive data analyzed by The Trace, December 2025; Newsweek: “Full List of ICE Shootings Since Donald Trump Took Office”, January 8, 2026; KOAT analysis, January 10, 2026.

No convictions of agents while on duty: Confirmed by Southern Border Communities Coalition (2010-2025), corroborated by The Trace, Human Rights Watch, ACLU investigations, and Department of Justice records.

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UNSPUN publishes longform essays, editorial encounters, and visual documents tracing the language of power as it operates in real time.

This work appears as part of UNSPUN’s ongoing inquiry into how authority circulates, how permission is granted, and how silence functions as structure rather than absence.

If something in this piece altered your footing, that alteration is intentional.
What follows does not ask for agreement. It asks for attention.

UNSPUN continues for those willing to stay with the work as it unfolds.

1. No federal agency maintains a comprehensive, publicly accessible database of deaths resulting from ICE or CBP enforcement actions. This finding is documented in multiple reports including: "ICE's Hidden History of Deadly Shootings" (The Trace, August 2024) and "Abuse of Power and Its Consequences" (Southern Border Communities Coalition, 2024).

2. Freedom for Immigrants press release, January 8, 2026.

3. Southern Border Communities Coalition database, "Border Lens: Abuse of Power and Its Consequences," documenting deaths resulting from CBP encounters between 2010-2024.

4. Gun Violence Archive data analyzed by The Trace, "Number of ICE Shootings During Trump Second Term," January 2026. The Trace notes these numbers are "likely an undercount, as shootings involving immigration agents are not always publicly reported."

5. Southern Border Communities Coalition, covering the period 2010-2025. This finding has been corroborated by investigations from The Trace, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU.