Deaths in Detention Warn of Horrors Behind ICE's Prison Walls

"The CoreCivic, Inc. California City Immigration Processing Center stands in the Kern County desert awaiting reopening as a federal immigrant detention facility under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California City, California, on July 10, 2025. PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP via Getty Images All eyes are on the Trump administration's brutal "immigration enforcement" operation in Minnesota, where roving squads of federal agents in Minneapolis are demanding proof of citizenship from people of color on the street and lashing out against residents enraged by the deadly shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer last week."

"Far less visible is the rapidly expanding, nationwide network of jails and prisons where ICE and Border Patrol lock people up after they are arrested, and that is almost certainly by design. Four people died in federal immigration jails so far in 2026, and at least 32 people died in ICE jails over the course of 2025 as President Donald Trump ramped up his mass deportation campaign. The death count for 2025 constituted the most deaths in ICE jails ever recorded outside the COVID-19 pandemic."

""If we are seeing that sort of outward extreme violence in broad daylight in the streets of Minneapolis and streets across the country, imagine what people must be facing behind closed doors and behind bars in ICE detention centers," said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the Detention Watch Network, in an interview with Truthout."

Immigration enforcement operations have intensified with visible street-level actions in Minneapolis and an expanding, nationwide network of detention facilities. The CoreCivic California City facility awaits reopening under ICE contract. Four people died in federal immigration jails in 2026, and at least 32 died in 2025, the highest non-pandemic death toll on record. ICE detained nearly 66,000 people in 2025, a 75 percent increase, and about 74 percent of those detained had no criminal convictions. Advocates warn that outward violence likely mirrors severe conditions inside detention centers.

Read at Truthout