As immigration arrests rise, conditions in U.S. detention centers have reached their most dangerous point in recent history.
This year so far, 19 immigrants have died in facility detention — 10 between January and June at the Everglades facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” — advocates say more than 1,200 detainees are missing, with families and lawyers unable to locate them.
Of the record 59,762 people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention as of Sept. 21, 42,755, or about 71 percent, have no criminal conviction, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
“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,” said Heather Hogan, policy and practice counsel at American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), at an American Community Media briefing.
“The contract security guards and ICE officers refer to immigration detainees as ‘bodies,’ which is a common term in incarcerated situations, and that’s the commonplace term among DHS officials,” continued Hogan, who previously worked as an asylum officer and interviewer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Describing a typical day for detainees, she said, “I was usually shocked by how early they were woken up and fed breakfast. It was 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 in the morning. By the time I talked to them, they were tired, they were hungry, and this is a life-altering interview to determine if they potentially qualified for a hearing in front of an immigration judge.”
“The government is trying to maximize the punitive nature of detention and make the conditions so difficult that people would rather leave than pursue relief,” she explained.
An April 2025 report from the California Justice Department regarding ICE detention centers in the state found deficiencies in suicide prevention, health care recordkeeping, staffing, and mental health care across all facilities statewide.
The 2025 fiscal year saw 22 overall deaths in ICE custody nationwide.
Over half of those dead were Latino, and most deaths took place in Florida, home to the Krome processing center in Miami, where advocates say that overcrowding and understaffing conditions are particularly dire.
These deaths are the second-highest on record, exceeded only by the 2004 fiscal year, which saw 32 deaths.
ICE reported that Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh, a 67-year-old man from Jordan, died of cardiac arrest after being hospitalized from Krome Detention Center in Miami on Oct. 11.
According to a press release from ICE, Leo Cruz-Silva, 34, a citizen of Mexico who was in the United States without legal authorization, died Oct. 4 at the Ste. Genevieve County Jail in Missouri. He was pronounced dead at 3:47 p.m. by Ste. Genevieve County EMS paramedics. The city is about 65 miles south of St. Louis.
Cruz-Silva was reportedly found with a sheet tied around his neck by a member of the jail staff, but despite efforts to revive him from the paramedics that showed up on the scene, their life-saving attempts were unsuccessful.
“Due process is at the core of this, and with what we’re seeing in … non-citizens facing potential torture and third country removals, having their rights completely disregarded with very little oversight,” said Yannick Gill, senior counsel for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. “This is where things become a little bit more political than legal, because of the characterization of all of these individuals being deported as the ‘worst of the worst,’ as ‘terrorists,’ as ‘members of cartels.’”
