A memo issued by the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, David Venturella, has ordered the federal agency to cease reporting the deaths of newly released detainees, in a change that could obscure the full human cost of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration mass detention policies.

The move, first reported by the Washington Post, rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release.

The goal of the 2021 policy was to ensure that ICE could not avoid accountability for deaths by releasing severely ill people from custody. Detainees with brain damage or suffering from infection, for instance, have died shortly after ICE released them.

The move comes as the agency faces scrutiny over the quality of the healthcare offered to detainees. Eighteen people have died in the first five months of this year and there have been a significant number of suicides.

The 2021 order was enacted after a man who contracted the coronavirus after suffering a stroke while detained for two years at the Adelanto detention center in California died three days after ICE released him.

Deborah Fleischaker, acting chief of staff at the time, said that the policy was “changed to make clear that ICE should not release people simply to avoid deaths in custody”.

In the latest memo, Venturella wrote: “ICE is returning to the standard practice of reporting deaths that occur while an individual is in agency custody.”

A spokesperson told the Washington Post the new policy was “common sense” and that ICE remained “committed to transparency” regarding detainee deaths but should not be responsible for monitoring or reviews “when an individual passes away weeks after leaving their custody”.

The Associated Press contributed reporting