{"id":76505,"date":"2025-10-22T12:53:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76505"},"modified":"2025-10-22T12:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:53:32","slug":"death-disappearance-neglect-escalate-in-u-s-immigrant-detention-camps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76505","title":{"rendered":"Death, Disappearance, Neglect Escalate in U.S. Immigrant Detention Camps"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As immigration arrests rise, conditions in U.S. detention centers have reached their most dangerous point in recent history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As immigration arrests rise, conditions in U.S. detention centers have reached their most dangerous point in recent history.<\/p>\n

This year so far, 19 immigrants have died in detention \u2014 10 between January and June. At the Everglades facility nicknamed \u201cAlligator Alcatraz,\u201d advocates say more than 1,200 detainees are missing, with families and lawyers unable to locate them.<\/p>\n

Of a record 59,762 people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention as of September 21, 42,755 or about 71% have no criminal conviction, according to\u00a0TRAC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cruelty is the point\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked to hundreds of detained asylum seekers, and I was frequently struck by how they\u2019re treated like incarcerated criminals, despite many having no criminal record,\u201d said Heather Hogan, policy and practice counsel at\u00a0American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)<\/a>, at an American Community Media briefing.<\/p>\n

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Heather Hogan, Policy and Practice Counsel, American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), discusses the treatment detained asylum seekers face, sharing what she has witnessed as an asylum officer with USCIS.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe contract security guards and ICE officers refer to immigration detainees as \u2018bodies,\u2019 which is a common term in incarcerated situations, and that\u2019s the commonplace term among DHS officials,\u201d continued Hogan, who previously worked as an asylum officer and interviewer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).<\/p>\n

Describing a typical day for detainees, she said \u201cI was usually shocked by how early they were woken up and fed breakfast. It was 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning. By the time I talked to them, they were tired, they were hungry, and this is a life-altering interview to determine if they potentially qualified for a hearing in front of an immigration judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government is trying to maximize the punitive nature of detention and make the conditions so difficult that people would rather leave than pursue relief,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

In the past week alone, an AILA member attorney reported that a detained woman withdrew her habeas petition after a mental breakdown.<\/p>\n

Another young woman \u201cwho one of my asylum officer colleagues had interviewed for a credible fear interview \u2014 she committed suicide just a few days after,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cRight now, the cruelty is the point. Separating people from their families, taking them away from their communities \u2014 the trauma is the point to get people to leave the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not being reported?<\/h2>\n

An\u00a0April 2025 report<\/a>\u00a0from the California Justice Department regarding ICE detention centers in the state found deficiencies in suicide prevention, health care recordkeeping, staffing and mental health care across all facilities statewide.<\/p>\n

The 2025 fiscal year saw 22 deaths in ICE custody nationwide.<\/p>\n

Over half of those dead were Latino and most deaths took place in Florida, home to the Krome processing center in Miami, where advocates say that overcrowding and understaffing conditions are particularly dire.<\/p>\n

These deaths are the second-highest on record, exceeded only by the 2004 fiscal year, which saw 32 deaths.<\/p>\n

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Andrew Free, Atlanta-based lawyer and founder of\u00a0#DetentionKills<\/a>, says ICE is not accurately reporting the number of detainee deaths and adds that there is a gap in reporting of deaths for the entire Trump administration.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a deadly time \u2026 but one of the very common phenomena as a result of the patchwork of information that ICE maintains about deaths in custody is that it\u2019s very hard for us to get authoritative information in one place,\u201d said Andrew Free, an Atlanta-based lawyer and investigative journalist who has been documenting deaths in Department of Homeland Services (DHS) custody through his Substack\u00a0DetentionKills<\/a>\u00a0since 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE is actually comparatively better than a lot of the prison jail systems in the United States. ICE tells us when a person dies and they release a report, subject either to affirmative release or the Freedom of Information Act,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut do we believe ICE\u2019s numbers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cross-referencing federal death data collected by the\u00a0Deportation Research Project<\/a>\u00a0with death data collected by states with mandatory custody death reporting, Free found that of people subject to an ICE detainer \u2014 a request from ICE to a local, state or federal custodian to detain the person at the end of their custody period \u2014 there were over 400 unreported deaths since fiscal year 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people who are dying in state or local custody whose deaths are never being reported publicly, and they\u2019re never being investigated. And so what is the true number of people dying in ICE custody? I don\u2019t actually know, and I don\u2019t think anybody does,\u201d said Free.<\/p>\n

\u2018Due process is at the core\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe lack of transparency that we\u2019ve seen is very, very unique to the Trump administration 2.0,\u201d said Yannick Gill, senior counsel for refugee advocacy at\u00a0Human Rights First<\/a>. \u201cWhat is unique with this administration is the brazen disregard of even members of Congress and elected officials gaining access.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yannick Gill, Senior Counsel for Refugee Advocacy, Human Rights First, discusses deportations to prisons around the world and the $150 billion Trump plans to use for immigration enforcement.<\/em><\/p>\n

As of July, at least 12 Democratic members of Congress have been denied entry to federal immigration facilities.<\/p>\n

Late that month, 12 Democrats from the House of Representatives filed a\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against the Trump administration in federal district court alleging that statutory provisions adopted by Congress in 2019 bar DHS from using federal funds to block Congress members from entering DHS detention facilities for the purposes of oversight.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue process is at the core of this, and with what we\u2019re seeing in \u2026 non-citizens facing potential torture and third country removals, having their rights completely disregarded with very little oversight,\u201d said Gill. \u201cThis is where things become a little bit more political than legal, because of the characterization of all of these individuals being deported as the \u2018worst of the worst,\u2019 as \u2018terrorists,\u2019 as \u2018members of cartels.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As of September, nearly a dozen countries \u2014 including El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda \u2014 have agreed to receive deportees from the U.S. with no prior ties to these nations.<\/p>\n

Last February, nearly 300 migrants from 10 mostly Asian countries were held in one Panama hotel.<\/p>\n

Last March, over 200 migrants alleged to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a reprise of a 9\/11 sentiment where human and civil rights are taking the back burner under the guise of fighting terror,\u201d Gill explained. \u201cWhen we look at immigration policy, one of the biggest disservices is to think that it\u2019s strictly an immigrant issue \u2026 and Trump is taking advantage of this and capitalizing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen organizations and individuals who have spoken out against Palestine. Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA+ rights \u2014 and most recently, the death of Charlie Kirk \u2014 all end up within the purview of the Trump administration,\u201d he added. \u201cReal implications that go far beyond the immigration rights movement will ultimately impact our civil and human rights, regardless of our nationality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySelen Ozturk Oct 21, 2025 As...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76506,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76505\/revisions\/76506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}