In a show of complete disregard for human rights or the civil rights afforded to immigrants under the U.S. Constitution, the White House’s weaponized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is flooding its own infrastructure, pushing it to the brink of failure. Every detention center is currently facing a critical breakdown due to a 75% surge in the detained population in 2025, which has reached a record high of over 73,000 individuals today. This rapid expansion has overwhelmed the system’s infrastructure with less oversight.
As inspections of detention facilities plummeted by over 36% in 2025, reports indicate that no federal facility lost funding (as prescribed by law) for failing to meet safety standards. Reports of extreme overcrowding and unsanitary conditions as some facilities reached three times their bed capacity. Detainees have reported being held in freezing cells, forced to sleep on concrete floors, served food contaminated with worms and mold, and a lack of adequate medical care.
Recent reports indicate that ICE has stopped paying third-party medical providers for detainee care, instructing them to hold claims until at least late April 2026. This has led to critical neglect, with detainees reportedly denied insulin and basic medical attention for days. All of this has led to an unprecedented death toll. The detention system saw at least 32 deaths in 2025, the highest in decades, and in the first three weeks of 2026, six more people died in ICE custody.
In an effort to handle the massive influx into an already broken and inhumane system, the Trump administration is opening massive tent cities on military bases, such as Fort Bliss, which now holds roughly 3,000 people in extreme weather conditions. A recent report from Sen. Jon Ossoff’s office detailed more than 1,000 human rights abuses. The report covered abuses including medical neglect, denial of clean water, and the abuse of pregnant women and children. Recently, a federal court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot prevent lawmakers from conducting oversight of detention centers.
The Detention Centers
The Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida, has experienced the most dramatic overcrowding. The facility was three times its rated capacity (approximately 1,961 detainees for a 611-bed space) in mid-2025. Detainees reported sleeping on cardboard boxes in visitation rooms and being piled into areas without access to bathrooms or water. Several videos were made in the facility last year, highlighting how bad it’s likely become since then.
Conditions at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, have been described as “inhumane” by visiting lawmakers. Reports from early this month detail rancid water that mothers must use for baby formula and food contaminated with bugs. In several instances, officials reportedly cut off water and internet access in response to detainee protests. The situation at Dilley has become so bad that the facility is currently battling a measles outbreak.
The Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, is one of the largest migrant detention facilities in the country. Overcapacity, with reports of up to 100 people housed in rooms with only 60 beds, has historically been a problem at Stewart. Many have described a dystopian environment where some detainees, including a double amputee, have been unable to access basic medical care for prosthetic limbs due to overcrowding and staff shortages.
The latest inhumane detention facility is Camp East Montana in Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. It is a $1.2 billion tent city that is currently the largest detention facility in the U.S. It is currently holding about 3,000 detainees in extreme El Paso weather conditions. Camp East Montana is built on a former military site, with plans to expand its capacity to 5,000 people.
In addition to the new Fort Bliss detention center, the Trump administration is creating new “mega” detention centers. To address the bed shortage and overcrowding, the government is moving toward an “industrialized” model, purchasing massive warehouses for conversion into detention jails. This includes a 9,500-bed facility in Hutchins, Texas, and a proposed 8,500-bed site in El Paso, which would become two of the largest jails in the world.
Other detention facilities with problematic histories include the Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi; the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas; the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana; and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California. With the Trump administration purchasing at least 23 warehouses for migrant detentions, the inhumanity is projected to get worse with less oversight.
Despite government ownership of these facilities, aside from local and county jails, they are nearly all operated by private corporations. The GEO Group and Core Civic benefit the most from profiteering off inhumanity, alongside other key operators like LaSalle Corrections, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), and Ahtna Technical Services. Other corporations profiting from this provide ancillary services like broad surveillance and tracking of immigrants and U.S. citizens, and transport services are broad.