ICE Detention Centers Face Widespread Medical Negligence Allegations Across 33 U.S. States

An Albanian man held in a New Mexico immigration detention center endured so much dental pain that he extracted his own tooth while waiting for care that never came. A Honduran mother of two was hospitalized for a heart condition after officers withheld her blood pressure medication while she was detained in Florida. A Venezuelan's leg turned purple and swollen from a flesh-eating bacterial infection because staff at a Vermont facility missed his scheduled medical appointment. These are not isolated incidents. Across at least 33 states, hundreds of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are alleging in federal lawsuits that the detention system systematically denies them adequate medical care—a crisis that has intensified dramatically as the number of people in ICE custody has nearly doubled.

When President Trump returned to office in January, the detained immigrant population surged to more than 75,000, compared to roughly 40,000 the previous year. The system, already fragile, began to buckle under the weight. An investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press examined thousands of court filings and interviewed more than 50 detainees, family members, and attorneys. The findings paint a picture of widespread medical abandonment across a sprawling network of facilities—from county jails to private prison companies to makeshift detention centers with nicknames like the "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida. Detainees report being denied medications for hypertension, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and HIV. Their requests for help went unanswered for weeks. Blood sugar levels spiked. Infections worsened. Cancers remained untreated. Some detainees collapsed or had seizures.

The human toll has been severe. A 48-year-old Guatemalan man, injured while in custody at Stewart Detention Center in rural Georgia, developed an E. coli infection after being forced to sleep on dirty concrete floors near leaking toilets. When he finally lost consciousness and was transported to a hospital an hour away, doctors told him that had he arrived any later, his left leg would have been amputated. He was eventually released and granted permanent legal residency, but the injury has left him unable to return to construction work. A man who lost one eye and suffered severe glaucoma in the other needed eye drops twice daily to preserve his remaining vision. He reported that on some days the drops never arrived. "Now I can only see a little bit straight ahead," he wrote in a court declaration. "Often it seems like I'm seeing through gauze. I'm very afraid that one day I'll open my eyes and not be able to see anything at all." He expressed terror at the thought of not being able to watch his son grow up.

The negligence extends to basic necessities. Some detainees were denied gauze for open wounds, prenatal care for high-risk pregnancies, pillows to ease the pain of sleeping with advanced stomach cancer, and sanitary pads for postpartum bleeding. A federal judge in Ohio expressed her disbelief during a hearing about a 70-year-old woman who lost her glasses during arrest: "If a person cannot see because their eyeglasses were lost during detention, that should be addressed." Yet even court orders are not consistently followed. A California judge ordered the government to take a man with symptoms of prostate cancer to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment. Records show he was never taken. The government's lawyers told the judge the officials missed the appointment due to an "internal scheduling error."

The crisis has been compounded by the dismantling of oversight. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security shut down the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which previously could facilitate medical care or investigate complaints of negligence. Now, according to immigration attorneys, there is no one to call. Detainees are frequently transferred across the country without notice, interrupting their treatment. A woman from El Salvador stopped taking her HIV medication for a week when she was moved from Colorado to a county jail in Wyoming. A Russian man scheduled surgery for painful gallstones while detained in Texas but was transferred between facilities before he could see the surgeon.

Families watch helplessly as their loved ones deteriorate. Riya Khan visited her 64-year-old mother, Masuma Khan, a week after she arrived at California City Detention Center in the Mojave Desert. The woman, who had arrived from Bangladesh in 1997 with no criminal record and was detained after a routine ICE check-in, was trembling and struggling to breathe. During her month in custody, she received her medications for hypertension, hypothyroidism, and prediabetes only sporadically. She received her asthma medication for the first time two days before her release. Her glaucoma drops never arrived. Before detention, Masuma had been friendly with everyone, her daughter said. She had worked for years at a beloved fast-food restaurant in Pasadena and spent her free time feeding birds and leaving fruit for bees on her apartment balcony. Now she is terrified to leave her home. Each time she must report to ICE, as required, the fear returns.

The Department of Homeland Security reported that 51 people have died in ICE custody since Trump's second term began, and suicides have reached unprecedented levels. When asked to respond to the investigation's findings, DHS declined to comment. The interim medical director, Sean Conley, has previously stated that it is "long-standing policy and practice" that immigrants receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody, and that the agency employs health professionals to maintain high standards. Individual facilities and private prison companies that responded said they adhere to ICE standards and provide adequate medical care when required. Some claimed ignorance of the allegations in court documents; others blamed detainees for deficiencies in their own care. But the court filings tell a different story—one of a system overwhelmed, indifferent, and increasingly unable or unwilling to meet the most basic obligations to the people in its custody.