Inside Trump’s ICE Concentration Camps

“This system is designed to punish, not protect”

Marking of Use-of-Force Injuries Against Immigrants Detained at Ft. Bliss (Credit: ACLU)

An Irish immigrant caught up in Trump’s mass-deportation web called in to RTÉ radio in Dublin on Feb. 9 from the detention camp in El Paso, Texas where he’s been held captive for the last four months. Seamus Culleton described being housed in “filthy” conditions, “rife” with disease, and suffering from hunger — in an atmosphere of fear he likened to a “modern day concentration camp.”

His was far from the only cry for help emerging from Donald Trump’s sprawling network of immigrant detention camps. In early February, detainees at a San Diego facility threw handwritten messages, attached to mini lotion bottles, over a concertina-wire fence; they decried “very poor” food, widespread illness, and a lack of access to the outdoors. “We are in dire straits,” wrote one detainee. In January, a mass protest broke out inside the South Texas “family detention” camp notorious for holding 5-year-old Minnesota abductee Liam Conejo Ramos, with the detainees screaming: “Let us out!” and “¡Libertad!”

Under Trump, immigrant detainees are now scattered across more than 200 facilities nationwide, many in rural areas far from public scrutiny. The number of detainees has soared from about 40,000 when Trump took office to nearly 70,000, according to an analysis from the American Immigration Council. Funding in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is expected to increase that to 135,000. The administration is now on an acquisition blitz, seeking dozens of buildings, including literal warehouses, for use to detain human beings. The largest of these facilities are expected to hold “7,000 to 10,000 detainees,” according to an ICE document outlining a $38 billion plan for “reengineering” the federal detention program.

The conditions in many of these facilities are intolerable — according to civil liberties and human rights groups, as well as congressional reports and detainees themselves — and even verge on “torture,” according to Amnesty International. Disease is said to be rampant; food and medical care sub-standard. And deaths are on the rise: There have been nearly 30 in-custody deaths reported by ICE since Trump took office, including one recently ruled a homicide.

The human beings housed in these facilities, in the main, haven’t been convicted of anything. Far from representing the “worst of the worst,” these people are awaiting due process for alleged civil charges relating to their immigration status. Many are asylum seekers. Some have green cards.

According to recent data, nearly 75 percent of immigrant detainees have no criminal record. As the AIC study describes it: “the profile of the average person sent to detention is now categorically different than in the past: this person is less likely to have had any interaction with the criminal legal system and more likely to have been arrested at their workplace.” Many currently in detention have been taken into custody outside of courts or schools.

Immigration detention in the United States is not supposed to be dangerous or harmful. By ICE’s own standards, it is meant to be “non-punitive.” The agency’s protocols insist detainees should receive “nutritious, attractively presented meals,” in sanitary living conditions where bathroom fixtures are clean, and detainees have “access to appropriate medical, dental, and mental health care.” ICE documents describe how detainees are to play sports like “soccer, basketball, volleyball,” with the possibility of “competitions between units.”

But a 2025 Senate judiciary committee report described a very different reality in Trump’s camps:

This system is designed to punish, not protect. Detainees are being denied medicine, sleep, clean clothes, and even sunlight. This punitive approach… humiliates and traumatizes individuals… seeking their day in immigration court.

The implicit design of the Trump camp system, in short, is to spur detainees to abandon their rights to due process, and agree to deportation in order to avoid what the Senate report describes as “intolerable… unsanitary and unsafe conditions.” As Culleton, the Irish whistle blower, put it, getting expelled from the country starts to look like a blessing compared to living in a “hellhole” camp one more day: “Grown men,” he said, “cry because they’re getting out of this place.”

The administration is ballooning the detainee population with aggressive sweeps like we’ve seen in the streets of L.A., Chicago, and Minneapolis, while also placing more of the people it arrests in indefinite detention. Historically, immigrants siezed by ICE in the nation’s interior have been entitled to a bond hearing and potential release until their day in immigration court. But a federal appellate court in Texas recently upended decades of precedent to bless a Trump policy that calls for mandatory detention of detainees — a provision previously reserved for recent arrivals apprehended near the border. In the affected states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi this will translate to indefinite stays in ICE camps. Immigration courts are already severely backlogged, with typical waits of months or even years for a final ruling.

In the twisted structure embraced by the Trump administration, each new human detained by ICE represents a profit opportunity for a corporation. Nearly 90 percent of people in immigration detention are held in facilities “owned or operated by private prison companies,” according to the AIC report. Trump’s brutal mass-detention complex is enriching a network of private prison companies with names like CoreCivic, Acquisition Logistics, and Akima Global Services — at taxpayer expense.

Below, we examine serious allegations from four federal facilities that have become notorious for detainee mistreatment. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment for this story.

Camp Name: East Montana

Location: El Paso, Texas

What It Is: A massive tent jail. The facility is built on the site of a former Japanese Internment camp at Fort Bliss, not far from the El Paso airport.

When Opened: August 2025

Population: The facility currently houses about 2,900 detainees. Still under construction, its targeted final bed count is 5,000.

Percent Non-criminal: 80%

Conditions: The ACLU has detailed “dangerous conditions of confinement” at East Montana. In a December letter to Congress, the civil liberties group warns of detainees being held in “squalid soft-sided tents with 72 people per unit, where toilets and showers flood eating areas with raw sewage.” Federal inspectors have reportedly found that East Montana detainees have been denied appropriate medical care, adequate food, and access to counsel.

Meals at East Montana make people sick: “Almost every detainee we talked to described widespread diarrhea and vomiting due to the food,” the ACLU reports. And detainees rarely get outdoors: “Not a single interviewee reported receiving daily recreation as required,” the letter states, “and most reported going weeks or even months without seeing the sky.”

The ACLU interviewed dozens of detainees, including many who said they had been beaten and threatened “in attempts to coerce” them to agree to be removed to Mexico — including people with no connection to that country. Camp guards, the ACLU alleges, have also engaged in “abusive sexual contact” with detainees. A teenager referred to as “Samuel” described being beaten unconscious by detention staff and ending up in the hospital. Samuel recalled how one officer “grabbed my testicles” and “crushed them.” Another detainee, “Isaac,” described similar abuse.

Culleton, the East Montana detainee who called the Irish radio station, is married to a U.S. citizen, has a work permit, and was on a path to normalizing his residency before he was picked up by ICE. He’s now been in detention for more than four months in El Paso. “There’s no real quality of life here,” he said, detailing “kid-sized meals” that leave “everybody” hungry and losing weight. He recounted shortages of soap and shampoo, and appalling hygiene: “The showers are filthy; the toilets are filthy.” Disease, he said, is constant: “Everybody is sick. There’s Covid in every pod; there’s influenza in every pod.”

Deaths: At least three detainees have died at East Montana. This includes the alleged homicide of a fifty-five year old father, who was reportedly observed being choked by guards.

Outbreaks: At least two cases of tuberculosis have been reported in recent days.

Who Profits? The camp is being built and is managed under a $1.24 billion contract by Acquisition Logistics — a shadowy Virginia-based firm with a modest record as a federal contractor. The company’s website lists no contact information, and multiple attempts by The Contrarian to reach the firm by phone and email were unsuccessful. Following a visit in February, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) warned that “the private company running this immigration detention facility is getting worse not better; and meanwhile they are continuing to pocket taxpayer dollars.”

---

Camp Name: Dilley Immigration Processing Center

Location: Dilley, Texas, an hour southwest of San Antonio

What Is It: Dilley is a 56-acre “family detention” facility surrounded by a high metal fence. Five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father were sent here following their capture in Minneapolis.

When Opened: Dilley was shuttered by the Biden administration in 2024 before being re-opened last spring by the Trump administration.

Population: ICE data only lists adults, with about 900 in captivity. About 345 children are also on site, according to estimates from immigrant groups.

Percent Non-criminal: 98% of adults

Conditions: Announcing Dilley’s reopening, CoreCivic promised a “safe environment” with “indoor and outdoor recreational activities, life skills, counseling, group interaction, and access to religious and legal services.” Reports from detainees, congressional observers, and court filings describe instead a facility with contaminated food, a lack of educational opportunities, and limited access to medical care. “Some children and parents have described Dilley to me as a living hell,” wrote Leecia Welch, Deputy Litigation Director at Children’s Rights in a recent court declaration. “Or a place where God no longer exists.”

December court records allege the Trump administration is violating standards for child-immigrant detainees established in a legal settlement known as Flores. They decry “inadequate medical care,” a lack of access to “varied child-friendly foods,” sleep deprivation “due to lights on in their living areas all night,” a lack of “adequate education and recreation” among other problems including access to counsel. Flores limits detentions of children to no longer than 20 days and guarantees “safe and sanitary” conditions. But court records indicate many stays have extended far beyond that deadline. (The Trump administration, in fact, is seeking to have Flores thrown out).

Detainees report being served food “contaminated with worms and mold, causing many children to become ill and vomit repeatedly.” Others describe substandard healthcare. “A two-year-old with fever and diarrhea was denied treatment for one week before she was diagnosed with flu and provided rehydration fluids,” reads one court declaration. Another details the “dangerous deterioration” of disabled children who no longer have access to therapies, including the case of a nine-year-old on the autism spectrum who vomits from the “harsh chemical smells in bathrooms” and has regressed to “the point of soiling himself and needing diapers.”

(ProPublica recently published heart-rending accounts and letters from child detainees themselves about life inside Dilley.)

Disease Outbreak: A measles outbreak hit the facility at the end of January.

Who Profits: CoreCivic. The private-prison corporation anticipates $180 million a year in revenue from Dilley. CoreCivic declined to answer specific questions about Dilley but touted its Human Rights Policy. “The health and safety of those entrusted to our care is the top priority for CoreCivic,” said spokesperson Ryan Gustin. “This commitment is shared by our government partners at ICE, and we work closely with them to ensure the well-being of everyone in our care.”

---

Camp Name: Krome North Service Processing Center

Location: At the west edge of Miami, FL, near the Everglades

What It Is: Krome combines both a short-term processing center and a long-term men’s detention facility

When Opened: Krome is one of the oldest detention facilities in the federal system, dating to a time when it was run by INS, the predecessor agency to ICE.

Population: About 900 in long term detention.
Percent Non-criminal: 56%

Conditions: Krome is a sacrifice zone for human dignity, according to a series of damning reports by Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch, the Senate judiciary committee, and Amnesty international.

The AIJ report, released last April, described new arrivals at Krome being left shackled on buses for as long as 16 hours, and then placed in holding rooms so crowded that one man slept sitting up on a toilet. The Senate report from July reported “dangerous” overcrowding and “deteriorating conditions,” with new arrivals being “held for up to 10 days in rooms where they lacked access to showers and beds, had limited access to food and water, and spent multiple nights sleeping on a concrete floor.” One man in the report described “infections he developed in his legs after wearing rusty shackles during transport to Krome.”

Overcrowding has also affected the camp’s long-term housing pods; with as many as 100 people jammed into a room equipped to hold 60. Delivery of medical care has been haphazard. In the report, detainees described “an ad hoc system where medical staff speak with only five men daily from each housing unit.”

Human Rights Watch detailed miserable conditions in a detainee tent newly built on the site, including broken air conditioning and men being “denied access to soap or water to wash their hands” for “20 consecutive days.” These detainees were allegedly not issued proper bedding and used their shoes as pillows. HRW indicated that such conditions “violated…key standards” of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners — a.k.a. the “Mandela Rules.”

In its December report, Amnesty International alleges that the conditions at Krome “may amount to torture.” In particular, the report underscores complaints of: “arbitrary disciplinary action, verbal and/or physical abuse, and solitary confinement.” One man described being held “basically incommunicado” during a 24-day hold in solitary with “no access to hygiene products” or a phone, and only one trip outside in that time.

The report also recounts an interaction in which Amnesty observers spoke, through a metal flap in a door, to a detainee who claimed to have been put in solitary confinement because he was on a hunger strike. The man had a “mangled hand” and told the inspectors he had been waiting for “37 days to receive medical attention.” As the man described his medical needs, according to the report, “an ICE official repeatedly and violently slammed the metal flap against the injured man’s hands.”

Deaths: Amnesty highlights four deaths in custody at Krome, which raises “serious concerns about access to quality healthcare at the facility.”

Who profits: Krome is operated under a $685 million contract by Akima Global Services, LLC. Akima did not respond to requests for comment by phone and email; its website states: “We provide safe, secure, humane, and compliant detention facility services.”

---

Camp Name: Otay Mesa Detention Center

Location: On the far outskirts of San Diego, California

What It Is: A detention center surrounded by fences topped with concertina wire, like a prison
Population: Nearly 1,500

Percent Non-criminal: 84%

When Opened: 2015

Conditions: In February, detainees lofted small lotion bottles, wrapped with hand-written messages, over the fences to advocates holding a vigil outside. (The bottle messages were first reported by the national treasure that is LATaco, a food blog that now reports on mass deportation.)

One detainee’s note described being in the facility since April. “It’s cold here. The food is very poor. For 280 days I haven’t seen a single piece of fruit.” It continues: “We’re in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We’re constantly sick.” The note details obstacles to communicating with attorneys. “We were tortured in our country,” it says, “and now are being held in prison indefinitely without the opportunity to properly prepare for trial. We are in dire straits.”

Seeking to investigate these disturbing allegations, Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA) presented himself at the detention center, as is the legal right of members of Congress — but was turned away. “What are they trying to hide here?” he asked.

San Diego County is taking matters into its own hands, asserting a privilege under state law to order a health inspection of the facility. “When people… are reduced to throwing handwritten messages over a fence to be heard, that is a public health emergency signal,” said board of supervisors chair Terra Lawson-Remer. “Silence and secrecy are not acceptable when health and safety are at stake.”

Who Profits:

CoreCivic runs Otay Mesa. Contacted about the alleged mistreatment, company spokesperson Gustin offered sunny declarations about the company’s health professionals and menu planning: “At OMDC,” he said, “we provide three nutritious meals a day for those in our care.”

Revelations about appalling conditions of immigrant detention are coming to the fore at a moment when Congress is debating the now-overdue Department of Homeland Security budget. Senate Democrats have rare leverage to demand changes — not only to the conduct of masked federal agents brutalizing communities like the Twin Cities, but to humanitarian oversight of those held captive by the U.S. government, as well as to the funding of new detention facilities.

The fight against ICE detention is also unfolding at the state and local level, with communities from Texas to New York pressuring warehouse owners not to sell or lease their facilities for ICE detention, and everyone from governors and state legislators to city councils and and planning commissions working to deny permitting or tie up detention projects with red tape.

Absent reform, America is on a historically dark path. As Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) recently described the administration’s aims to The Contrarian’s Jen Rubin: “These people want to fill these detention centers — these concentration camps.”

---

Tim Dickinson is the senior political writer for The Contrarian