ICE custody deaths are at a 2-decade high. An Afghan refugee who helped U.S. forces is the latest to die.

Dallas — On March 13, Afghan immigrant Naseer Paktiawal received a call from Immigration and Custom Enforcement, which had just arrested his brother in North Texas. The first thing his brother told him was that he wasn't feeling well.  In:

Dallas — On March 13, Afghan immigrant Naseer Paktiawal received a call from Immigration and Custom Enforcement, which had just arrested his brother in North Texas. The first thing his brother told him was that he wasn't feeling well. 

"I told [the agent] my brother needs help. He's not feeling good. He's feeling pain in his body," he told CBS News in Richardson, Texas. "He told me, don't worry about it. We have a nurse. We will take care of him. And he hung up the phone on me." 

Less than 24 hours later, he was told his brother, 41-year-old Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, had died. 

Paktiawal, who was evacuated from Afghanistan during the U.S. military withdrawal from the country in the summer of 2021, is the twelfth person to die this year while in ICE custody. That's after 31 ICE detainees died in 2025, a two-decade high, according to a CBS News data analysis. By this point last year, four ICE detainees had died.

The rising death toll comes as ICE's detention population hit record highs amid President Trump's aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. As of early February, ICE was holding more than 68,000 people in detention centers across the U.S., agency figures show.