Reports of Abuse Pour Out of Federal Immigration Detention Centers

Hunger strikes, photos of bruised detainees, congressional investigations—allegations of neglect, abuse, and wretched conditions are piling up inside federal immigration detention centers as the Trump administration continues its mass deportation campaign.

Yesterday, detainees at the North Lake Processing Center, a privately run detention center in Baldwin, Michigan, announced they were launching a hunger strike to protest poor living conditions and lack of due process.

“We demand competent doctors, better medical care—the food here is absolute garbage—and, above all, an end to the procedural delays we are suffering through inside these walls,” a North Lake detainee said in a translated statement emailed by No Detention Centers in Michigan, an immigrant advocacy group. “We are being held prisoner arbitrarily. The majority of us meet all the requirements to be released, yet judges capriciously deny us bond and the basic rights to which we are entitled. We need to get out of here and to be treated like human beings.”

The North Lake detainees are not alone. PennLive reported last week that roughly 100 men detained at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, also launched a hunger strike after staff ignored a detainee who threw up and passed out.

“He vomited a green substance and fainted,” a “source inside the facility” told PennLive. “His body was white. He was shaking and sweating and officials paid no attention to him.”

“We have found worms in our water, bugs in our food and today I found a black substance in my milk container,” the source said. “The conditions here are terrible.”

Two separate reports published in 2024 by the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Temple University Beasley School of Law found similar widespread complaints about medical neglect, malnutrition, and abuse.

Meanwhile, in Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz detention camp, attorneys for detainees claimed in court filings earlier this month that guards cut off phone access to detainees and then beat and pepper-sprayed detainees who complained.

Katie Blankenship, an attorney with Sanctuary of the South, a legal aid group for immigrants, filed a declaration in federal court on April 10 that included pictures of her client with a large, dark bruise surrounding one of his eyes.

According to Blankenship’s declaration, first reported by the Miami Herald, the incident began on April 2 when guards at the tent camp suddenly cut off detainees’ access to phones, their only way to communicate with family and attorneys.

Detainees began loudly complaining, including two of Blankenship’s clients, Lazaro Hernandez Galban and Raiko Lopez Morffi.

As the situation escalated, “an officer came in and punched Mr. Morffi in his right eye and began to beat him,” Blankenship wrote. “He was taken out of the cage and thrown to the ground and beaten by multiple guards. He suffered injuries to his shoulder and arm and was kicked in the head. A guard placed their knee on his neck when the guard was trying to restrain him.”

The officers “beat several people during this incident and broke another detained individual’s wrist,” Blankenship’s declaration continued. “The officers then pepper sprayed everyone in the cage. A detained older gentleman passed out, as he could not breathe.”

Blankenship took pictures of Morffi’s bruised face during an April 8 video call.

Blankenship’s declaration is part of a motion filed by immigrant rights groups arguing that the detention camp is not complying with a federal judge’s March 27 order to increase detainees’ access to unmonitored phone calls with attorneys and to take other measures to improve access to legal resources. The groups filed a lawsuit last July alleging that the camp was denying detainees’ right to counsel and blocking attorneys from visiting their clients.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D–Fla.) performed an unannounced inspection of Alligator Alcatraz earlier this month. At a press conference following the visit, Wasserman Schultz said there were roughly 1,500 men being held in cages at the facility, which was hot, lacking enough portable toilets, and smelled of urine.

“Like nine months ago, I came away with the reaction that this facility is inhumane, that the way the detainees are housed is cruel and unnecessary, that ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is hiding behind Florida state agencies to avoid any obligation to treat people humanely, and that the cost of the facility itself is being hidden behind the state of Florida,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Other Democratic members of Congress are pressuring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over conditions at the camp as well. Sens. Jon Ossoff (D–Ga.) and Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) sent a letter on March 25 to new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding information about multiple reports of detainees at the detention camp being put in a small, stifling hot box as punishment.

“There have been credible allegations that detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ have been punished with confinement in a small cage-like structure known as ‘the box,’ where they are held in stress positions with hands and feet tightly shackled for hours at a time, in direct sunlight with no access to food or water,” the senators wrote.

Another lawsuit is challenging conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California. The suit alleges that at Adelanto, “disease and illness are rampant, mold grows on the walls, food is unsanitary, water is undrinkable, and medical care is largely nonexistent.”

The filings included declarations from roughly two dozen detainees describing a lack of adequate medical care and poor living conditions. One detainee said in his declaration that he’s been waiting six months for a colonoscopy after an external urologist told him she was concerned about possible prostate cancer. He had to wait six months for the appointment with the urologist to begin with.

“I am worried that I have undiagnosed cancer,” the detainee wrote. “And even if I am diagnosed at some point, it has taken so long for me to get medical appointments here that I am worried the cancer will not be caught at an early stage and that I will not get adequate cancer treatment as long as I am detained at Adelanto.”

Deaths in ICE custody have skyrocketed since the Trump administration launched its mass deportation program. There have been 28 deaths so far this fiscal year, a two-decade high, according to Detention Watch Network, a coalition of groups that advocates for abolishing the immigration detention system.

“ICE’s immigration detention system deprives people of freedom, isolates people away from loved ones, and subjects people to abysmal conditions, including inadequate medical care and mental health services, inedible food, and racist abuse,” Setareh Ghandehari, the advocacy director of Detention Watch Network, said in a press release following one of the most recent deaths.

Last year, the Trump administration gutted the three Department of Homeland Security offices responsible for monitoring conditions inside immigrant detention centers.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.