Deaths in Detention: ICE Is Rapidly Expanding Detention Camps into Warehouses Despite Record Deaths

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced the death of another person in its custody — the 17th person so far in 2026. Deaths inside of immigration detention centers are rising and now occur at a rate of roughly one every six days. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, more than 40 people have died in immigration detention, the highest number recorded in such a short period.

These are not isolated tragedies, but the predictable outcomes of a system rife with neglect, abuse, and impunity. Recent deaths span multiple facilities with documented medical failures and unsafe conditions. At Fort Bliss, the Florence Correctional Center, and the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, individuals have died from homicide, untreated infections, and delayed emergency care. In many cases advocates and medical experts have found these deaths to be preventable. For example, a tooth infection was left, untreated until it turned septic, or a chronic condition was ignored until it led to organ failure. The ACLU and our partners have repeatedly documented substandard medical care and the routine withholding or delay of medical records within ICE facilities.

Yet against the backdrop of this mounting death toll, ICE is rapidly expanding its detention infrastructure. Under what it calls a “Detention Re-engineering Initiative,” the agency is working to acquire more than 20 warehouses to be converted to detention facilities, with some already purchased at prices well above market value, including a Maryland warehouse that was appraised for $76.8 million in June and sold to the federal government for $102.4 million in January. ICE is adopting a hub-and-spoke model with eight large-scale detention centers and more processing sites. If successful, this plan would increase detention capacity to 96,600 people at any given time. ICE has already bought at least 10 warehouses and begun repurposing several into massive holding sites. These facilities range from 500-bed processing centers to sprawling compounds intended to cage up to 10,000 people at a time.

The design and intent of these facilities are unmistakable. The floorplans resemble industrial storage operations more than humane environments: rows of bunk beds under constant surveillance, minimal access to outdoor space, and little to no access to lawyers or immigration courts. This is detention conditions used as deterrence, combined with new detention policies that limit access to bond and mean many detained people simply cannot win release from detention. Horrific conditions and hopelessness push people into abandoning valid legal claims and pathways to return to their families and American communities.

From the internment of Japanese Americans to the mass detention of Jewish people across Europe, to the confinement of kidnapped Africans aboard ships during the transatlantic slave trade, history offers stark warnings on targeting entire populations for confinement. Used under the guise of policy and profit, large-scale detention to control or exclude certain groups has consistently resulted in widespread human rights abuses and loss of life.

This moment is particularly alarming because the warehouse plan appears to be designed recklessly and callously. Many of the proposed warehouse facilities are located far from airports or deportation hubs, raising doubts about why they are being used at all. The shift appears driven less by logistical necessity than by optics-- to make detention so harsh and degrading that people abandon their legal claims, and to create visibly punitive conditions that deter others from migrating. For Stephen Miller’s detention system, cruelty is the point.

ICE reports the deaths in its custody with chilling detachment, reading more like a tally than an acknowledgment of human loss. These legally required notification memos are often released days after a person’s death and are typically reduced to a name, age, country of origin, and, if applicable, alleged criminal history. The report on Emmanuel Damas, for example, a 56-year-old Haitian immigrant who entered the United States in 2024 through a now-terminated parole program, leaves out critical context. Damas repeatedly sought care for a severe, escalating tooth infection over the course of a week. Instead of receiving adequate treatment, he was only given ibuprofen. As a result, his condition deteriorated into septic shock and ultimately led to his death.

For others still confined in immigration detention, the experiences remain horrific. Rodney Taylor, a double amputee detained at the Stewart Detention Center, has endured the systemic disregard for human life and dignity that defines ICE facilities. Taylor — who lost both legs as a child and relies on prosthetics, needs consistent access to medical care and accommodations to survive. In ICE custody, he has gone days without being able to properly charge his prosthetic legs, leaving him dependent on others for basic needs like food. He has also been forced to crawl on his hands to use showers reportedly covered in feces, mold, and bodily fluids. Denied adequate support and unable to use a wheelchair due to limited hand mobility, Taylor has at times been left without meaningful mobility for days.

Floorplans for a proposed ICE detention warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, show only a handful of cells marked with accessibility symbols, with no further plans for medical care or accommodations for mobility, hearing, or visual impairments. Taylor’s experience is just one of many cases of documented abuse within a detention system that subjects medically vulnerable individuals to conditions that strip away dignity and basic humanity.

This is the very system that ICE is now pouring tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into expanding. Recent contracts highlight a troubling pattern. This includes a $113 million contract to retrofit warehouse facilities for mass detention which was awarded to a little-known defense contractor with no prior experience in immigration enforcement. ICE’s “detention re-engineering” seems aimed at rapidly spending tens of billions in federal relief funds — money that could have gone to housing, healthcare, or education. Instead, it is being funneled into the expansion of detention facilities with minimal oversight and consultation with local officials or impacted communities.

Across the country, grassroots organizers, legal advocates, and local governments are mounting coordinated resistance and throwing sand in the gears of ICE’s plans. Community groups have organized protests, state attorneys general have filed lawsuits, and city councils have leveraged their authority to block construction and renovation by passing ordinances that require local approval for new detention facilities.

In some cases, local officials have taken even more direct action. In Social Circle, Georgia, for example, city leaders shut off the water supply and locked the meter until ICE provided details about the proposed facility’s impact on the town’s limited infrastructure. The states of Maryland, New Jersey, and Michigan have sued to enjoin the development of warehouses in their states, and in the Maryland case, a federal judge temporarily halted ICE from turning a warehouse into a detention center citing the sewage system could not withstand hundreds of people.

In Merrimack, New Hampshire, the ACLU of New Hampshire and our partners mobilized quickly after a right-to-know request revealed that a state agency consulted with ICE to repurpose a warehouse in the town for immigration detention. As a result, New Hampshire residents responded in force, flooding town officials with calls and pushing the issue onto the agenda of town meetings. One early meeting brought in about 1,200 people who urged officials to do everything in their power to “put sand in the gears” of the project. Thousands across the state also made their voice heard through a public survey released by New Hampshire’s U.S. representatives and senators. Because of the coordinated pressure — through protest, letter writing, phone calls, and more — Governor Kelly Ayotte ultimately announced the Merrimack facility would not move forward.

Facing increased scrutiny, the Department of Homeland Security has also recently announced a pause on the purchase of additional warehouses for immigration enforcement. Still, the facilities the agency has already acquired will continue to be developed for mass detention, and the pause on purchasing new ones may only be temporary. Amid record deaths, documented abuses, and signs of profit-seeking, the expansion of immigration detention facilities demands urgent action. Congress is currently considering an additional 140 billion in federal funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through the highly partisan reconciliation process – this funding would be on top of the over $170 billion DHS received for immigration enforcement, including detention, last summer. This money would help further expand and perpetuate the immigration detention system and the harms it continues to cause. You can write or call your member of Congress and demand that they vote against any bill that would inflate ICE and CBPs budgets. The question is no longer whether the system is broken, but whether we are willing to confront and dismantle what it has become.