Sandra Hernandez is a former journalist who wrote about immigration detention. She is director of strategic communications at the Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.
The United States has reached a grim milestone. The number of deaths in federal immigration custody is at a 22-year high.
The carnage comes as the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency rushes to carry out mass deportations at any cost.
That campaign has claimed innocent lives across communities – from Minneapolis to Texas to Maine – where cellphone footage has captured federal immigration agents gunning down people, refuting ICE’s false claims that its agents were acting in self-defense.
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But there are no cellphones to capture the neglect and abuse inside the growing number of immigrant detention facilities, a polite description of inhumane prisons holding thousands at more than 200 U.S. sites. California, with eight of the centers so far, warehouses the third-largest imprisoned population of immigrants in the U.S.
In fiscal 2019, eight people died overall in U.S. immigration detention. That number tripled last fiscal year, to 24. As of Sept. 20, 37 deaths have been reported.
Medical experts and lawyers are increasingly questioning whether these deaths would have been preventable if adequate medical care had been provided.
The story of Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, a Los Angeles resident, is a case in point. Born in Mexico, Reyes lived in L.A. for more than two decades working construction jobs. In January, he was detained by federal immigration agents and eventually transferred to the Adelanto Detention Center, in the Mojave Desert.
Golden State staff
Like most ICE detention centers, Adelanto is a for-profit, privately run facility. Reyes’ wife and other immigrants have told media outlets that he grew sick while detained, but the staff at Adelanto ignored his repeated requests for medical care. Other detained immigrants described how Reyes became weak; his face changed color. Reyes fainted and was eventually taken to a hospital where he died on Feb. 27.
So far, the Trump administration has shown little interest in addressing the rising number of detainee deaths. For example, the administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill includes an unprecedented $45 billion to expand the already vast network of ICE detention centers. Separate legislation this summer also provides another $31 billion for “mission support.” Yet there is no indication that funding will go toward hiring more medical staff to care for the record number of detainees, projected to top 100,000 this year.
The administration has also slashed meaningful oversight of the centers, eliminating the ombudsman office that oversaw reports of misconduct, including deaths in detention and inadequate medical care, while limiting access to offsite providers and medication.
Bob Horning
Ignoring the detainee medical crisis fits the administration’s xenophobic agenda.
Put simply, detention is one of the most powerful tools the government has to coerce immigrants to abandon their legal fight, regardless of the strength of their asylum claims or the validity of other grounds that may allow them to stay in this country.
And the notoriously inhumane conditions inside the facilities, including the lack of adequate medical care, serve to pressure individuals to self-deport.
As one former ICE official told The New Yorker, the idea is to quickly expand detention as “cheaply and brutally” as possible.
In California, civil rights groups and some state officials are pushing for improvements. Several federal class-action lawsuits have been filed against Adelanto and the California City Detention Center, in Kern County, asking for relief from illegal conditions – “rampant” disease and illness, “insufficient” food, drinking water and inadequate access to doctors, attorneys and loved ones. At least one federal court in the Adelanto suit is requiring the government to provide a plan to assure “appropriate” treatment, “timely” testing and “continuous” access to medications.
The lawsuits underscore the government’s intentional neglect; however, those challenges can take months or years to resolve.
Mariel Garza
Some may insist that immigrants in the country without permission can choose to return home rather than face dangerous detention. That argument, however, fails to recognize that the federal government is required to provide for the basic human needs of anyone it detains, including medical care.
Others may argue that detention centers have always struggled to provide adequate care and the rise in deaths simply reflects the increase in the detention population.
A 2026 Human Rights Watch report debunks that argument. It found that the number of deaths in “ICE custody has increased at a rate disproportionate to the growth in the detained population.” That same report points to inadequate medical staffing or delayed healthcare as a factor in many of the deaths.
It’s unclear what effect the upcoming national elections could have on immigration enforcement. Lawmakers helped create this crisis. At minimum, they should even now be demanding that ICE meet adequate medical staffing levels at all detention centers. They could also re-create an independent office to monitor complaints and investigate deaths.
Americans are not safer if their government betrays the fundamental guarantees and protections that the Constitution provides every person, regardless of immigration status. Turning a blind eye to medical neglect and abuse inside the world’s largest immigration detention network does just that.
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