Deaths, Disappearances, and Danger in Immigrant – Detention In partnership with American Community Media – National Briefing Series

By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,

Pilar Marerro, co-producer of American Community Media’s Weekly National Briefings served as moderator for this briefing with three expert panelists and eighty media outlets. She reported that fifteen immigrants have died in immigration detention so far this year, ten of them between January and June, making that period the deadliest in recent history. Some of these deaths were suicides. Additionally, more than 1,200 people are allegedly missing from the infamous and controversial Everglades facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” with families and attorneys unable to locate them.
Advocates report that children are being subjected to prolonged detention under harmful conditions, and that reports of overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, and problems with food and health care access are multiplying. There are currently close to 60,000 detainees, a record number, and the rapid expansion of arrests and detention, combined with diminishing transparency, signals a worsening situation for immigrants, most of whom have not been convicted of any crime.

The first panelist, Heather Hogan, Policy and Practice Counsel, at American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Hogan indicated that “the government is taking significant actions in immigration enforcement that will have long-term consequences for individuals, their families and American society as a whole… I’ve talked to hundreds of detained asylum seekers, and I was frequently struck by how they’re treated like incarcerated criminals, despite many having no criminal record. I can describe a typical day, starting for an asylum seeker with an extremely early wake up, as early as 3:30AM, and by the time I talked to them they were tired, they were hungry -this is a really important- you know, life-altering interview to determine if they potentially qualified for a hearing in front of an immigration judge.
Here they are seeking asylum, most with no criminal record, yet housed in a prison in orange jumpsuits and shackled at the wrists and ankles. So, the system is extremely dehumanizing and mocking detainees and referring to them as bodies are common examples. It’s no surprise that in detention, especially prolonged detention, it causes widespread mental health issues. Most asylum seekers, frankly, already have had really traumatizing experiences before they ever come to the U.S. – detention then exacerbates their trauma.”

R. Andrew Free is an Atlanta-based lawyer and founded the hashtag #DetentionKills. “I’ve been working with families and communities in responding to deaths in ICE custody since May of 2017. That’s when I was contacted by the immigration lawyer of Gene Jimenez, who died at the Stewart Detention Center (Lumpkin, GA) by suicide. The Stewart Detention Center is the deadliest facility in the United States for the last eight fiscal years. I’m just going to talk to you very briefly about where we are in terms of morbidity and mortality and ICE custody this year. I’ve moved out of the active practice of immigration law and civil rights law into journalism, and I now write stories about this, and I spend a lot of time helping other journalists and publications report out stories about this. It’s the deadliest year in ICE detention since COVID. At the end of the fiscal year, which ended last week, we had 22 deaths in ICE custody. That’s the second highest level ever on record, exceeded only by deaths in custody in fiscal year 2004.
The largest number of deaths happened at the Krome North Detention Center in Miami, it’s particularly overcrowded and understaffed. We’ve had women sleeping in buses in the parking lot and people dying as a consequence. Texas was the second largest. In FY25, the average daily detention population was 61,000. The VERA Institute has released information detailing 437 active detention facilities, with another 961 facilities labeled as inactive.”
There are numerous facilities located or being used by DHS/ICE in Mississippi, including the Madison County Jail, Jackson MS Hold Room in Pearl, Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, and the Hancock County Public Safety Complex in Bay St. Louis. These facilities are often used for 24-hour holds, with nightly populations ranging from 8 in Pearl to 2,206 in Natchez, per The VERA Institute.
In responding to questions from media outlets, panelists shared that it is important to remember that people are fleeing to the United States for safety, and then some are being held in solitary confinement, which the United Nations labels as torture. “The difference now with detention is that cruelty is the point, the goal encouraged by the government, whereas in the past human rights and the rule of law were priorities,” per the panelists.
Free also indicted that “ICE only lists about 180 facilities, the last time he checked. So, there are a bunch of shadow sites. We would call these black sites, if it were any other country.
The nature of these sites is also particularly troubling because, when you’re not in a detention facility with a statistical reporting system, you’re probably also not in the ICE Detainee Locator. That is what my colleagues have referred to as the consequence of enforced disappearances.”

The final panelist, Attorney Yannick Gill, with Human Rights First – an independent advocacy organization which challenges America to live up to its ideals – discussed not only the conditions surrounding access to detention centers, but the continued rise in the use of third-party country agreements. “We are seeing rampant human rights violations; inhumane, unnecessary and unlawful conditions of migrants and asylum seekers. Our reports cite evidence of medical neglect, physical and psychological mistreatment, and denial of legal counsel. All are unconstitutional.” Yannick added that currently the United States has agreements with Venezuela, Cuba, Costa Rica, Haiti, Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda, and Sudan, for the deportation of immigrants.
The entire one-hour briefing can be viewed at https://americancommunitymedia.org/media-briefings/deaths-disappearances-and-danger-in-immigrant-detention/.