detention

WASHINGTON — At Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the country, detainees go without medicine for serious health conditions, endure miscarriages while shackled and are dying in record numbers, a group of U.S. senators said.

In a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE senior official Todd Lyons, 22 Democratic lawmakers alleged that a “dramatic” surge in deaths in federal immigration custody is a “clear byproduct” of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and rapid expansion of detention.

“Each death in ICE custody is a tragedy and, based on the evidence available from agency records, 911 calls, and medical experts, many could have been prevented if not for this Administration’s decisions,” the senators wrote. The letter, released Tuesday, was led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and signed by California Sen. Alex Padilla.

At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, they asserted. That’s triple the previous year’s total and more deaths than were recorded during the entire Biden administration. ICE has reported seven deaths so far this year, as well as seven in December alone.

In the letter, the senators demanded detailed information about the agency’s death investigations, medical standards and oversight procedures.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to the allegations but has repeatedly defended its detention standards. In a statement, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” adding that detainees receive medical, dental and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arrival, full health assessments within 14 days and access to 24-hour emergency care.

The lawmakers’ warning comes amid mounting allegations that detention facility staff have withheld critical medication, delayed emergency responses and failed to provide adequate mental health care.

The agency came under flak recently after a Texas medical examiner ruled the January death of a Cuban immigrant a homicide after witnesses said they saw guards choking him to death.

In Calexico, Calif., Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, died after more than a month in detention, records show; the Honduran national’s family alleged that he repeatedly reported worsening stomach and chest pain but received only pain medication.

The recent rise in deaths coincides with a dramatic expansion of the detention system. Funding for ICE roughly tripled after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The agency has used the funds to increase detention capacity, holding more than 67,000 people nationwide after reaching a historic high of approximately 73,000, many of whom have no criminal history, the letter says.

Last week, the Trump administration announced $38.3 billion in partnerships with private prison corporations, including GEO Group and CoreCivic, to further scale up detention space. One planned facility near Phoenix will cost $70 million and span the equivalent of seven football fields, according to the lawmakers. ICE has also reopened facilities that were previously shuttered over chronic staffing shortages and medical concerns.

Concerns about conditions have extended to California. Last month, Padilla and Sen. Adam Schiff toured a for-profit detention center in California City after reports of unsafe facilities, inadequate medical care and limited access to attorneys.

“It’s the tragic result of a system failing to meet the most basic duty of care,” Padilla said in a statement, citing reports of mold in food, unclean drinking water and barriers to medical care.

A federal judge recently ordered the administration to provide adequate healthcare and improved access to counsel at the facility, concluding that detainees were likely to “suffer irreparable harm” without court intervention.

In their letter, the senators argued that the rapid growth of the detention system has outpaced oversight and accountability. They cited internal audits documenting violations of detention standards, allegations that ICE failed to pay third-party medical providers for months and analyses of 911 calls from large facilities showing repeated cardiac events, seizures and suicide attempts.

“Rather than accepting responsibility for deaths in government custody and providing detailed facts about the circumstances of each death,” the senators wrote, “the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to smear deceased individuals’ reputations by emphasizing details about their immigration status and their alleged wrongdoing.”

As detention capacity continues to expand, the climbing death tallies underscore the extent to which the Trump administration has overhauled the immigration detention system, and Democrats say the results are fraught.

The opposition party has grown more unified after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minnesota, which coincided with reports of record high detention deaths in December.

Discord culminated in a partial government shutdown that began Friday when Senate Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to reform at the agency.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman detained in the United States by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since March, has been rushed to a hospital after a medical episode, according to media reports.

Kordia is being held in Texas after being detained as part of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses across the country.

Her legal team said she was targeted for her protest against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza near Columbia University in New York in 2024, but the federal government said she was arrested for allegedly overstaying her student visa.

Since her hospitalisation on Friday, Kordia’s legal team and family said they have not been able to speak with her and do not know her whereabouts.

Here is everything we know about Kordia and why she continues to remain in detention:

Who is Kordia?

Kordia grew up in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah before coming to the US in 2016. She arrived on a visitor’s visa, staying with her mother, a US citizen, in Paterson, New Jersey, home to one of the largest Arab communities in the country.

She later transitioned from a tourist visa to a student visa, according to her habeas corpus petition.

After her mother applied for Kordia to remain in the US as the relative of a citizen, her green card application was approved in 2021. However, she received incorrect advice from a teacher that led to her student visa expiring in 2022, according to her lawyers.

Before her arrest, Kordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Palestine Way in New Jersey and helped to care for her autistic half-brother.

Kordia was moved to protest against Israel’s war due to personal loss. Since the start of the war in October 2023, Kordia said, more than 200 of her relatives have been killed.

Israel has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 170,000 in a war that human rights groups, a United Nations commission and a growing number of scholars said amounts to genocide. Since a “ceasefire” began in October, Israel has killed more than 500 Palestinians and continues to impose curbs on the entry of aid into Gaza.

If deported, Kordia would be handed over to the Israeli government.

Why was Kordia arrested?

She was first arrested in April 2024 during a protest outside the gates of Columbia University, but the case was soon dropped.

On March 13, 2025, Kordia showed up at the ICE headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, for what she believed to be routine immigration questions. She was detained there, “thrown into an unmarked van and sent 1,500 miles [more than 2,400km] away”, Kordia wrote in the USA Today newspaper last month.

Kordia was neither a student at Columbia University nor a part of political circles.

“Though I was not a student, I felt compelled to participate. After all, Israel, with the backing of the United States, has laid waste to Gaza, forcibly displacing my family, killing nearly 200 of my relatives,” she wrote in USA Today.

Today, Kordia is the only person who remains in detention from the Columbia campus demonstrations. She has been held at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

A leader of the protests, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student with Algerian citizenship and a US green card, and others have been released. Khalil, however, is still in a legal battle to remain in the US with his American wife and child. Last month, an appeals court panel dismissed a lawsuit Khalil filed challenging his detention and deportation order. The judges concluded that the federal court that ordered Khalil’s release last year lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

What are the charges against Kordia?

The US government has called Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East evidence of possible ties to “terrorists”.

Kordia’s lawyers have continuously argued for her release, saying she was targeted by federal officials for her participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

The federal government has maintained that the case against Kordia is of overstaying a student visa.

“Her arrest had nothing to do with her radical activities,” the Department of Homeland Security said in April. “Kordia was arrested for immigration violations due to having overstayed her F-1 student visa, which had been terminated on January 26, 2022, for lack of attendance.”

Writing in USA Today last month, Kordia said she does not consider herself either a leader or an activist.

“I am a devout Muslim who is deeply committed to my faith and community. I’m a Palestinian woman who enjoys playing the oud, making pottery and hiking,” Kordia wrote. “Speaking out against what rights groups and experts have called a genocide is my moral duty and – I thought – a constitutionally protected right for all in this country. Except, it seems, when that speech defends Palestinian life.”

An immigration judge has called for Kordia’s release twice. However, it has been repeatedly blocked through a series of procedural and administrative moves.

“[The] Trump administration has exploited rarely used procedural loopholes to keep me confined, a practice now being challenged in federal district courts across the country, with many finding the practice unconstitutional,” Kordia wrote.

How has Kordia lived in ICE detention?

Since Kordia was moved to the ICE detention facility in Alvarado in March, she has been facing a range of issues, from sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor to being denied religious accommodations, including halal meals.

“Inside the ICE facility where I’m being held, conditions are filthy, overcrowded and inhumane,” Kordia wrote in her piece for USA Today. “For months, I slept in a plastic shell, known as a ‘boat,’ surrounded by cockroaches and only a thin blanket. Privacy does not exist here.”

Last year, when Kordia’s cousin Hamzah Abushaban visited her a week after her arrest, he told The Associated Press news agency in an interview that he was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.

“One of the first things she asked me was why she was there,” Abushaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”

Rights groups and some Democratic Party leaders have called her a “political prisoner”, condemning the way her case has proceeded.

State Representative Salman Bhojani said the conditions at the detention facility were “suffocating”.

Kordia’s dorm, he said, had 60 mattresses crammed into a space designed for 20 women.

“She does not even have clothing that fully covers her body. Community organizations have tried to provide more appropriate clothing and have been turned away,” Bhojani said. “Male staff enter the dorm at any time, leaving her body exposed in violation of her religious obligations.”

Calling for her release, Amnesty International noted that ICE has “repeatedly violated” Kordia’s religious rights. “She has been served almost no halal meals, forcing her to eat food that doesn’t meet her dietary requirements and causing significant weight loss,” the human rights group said in a statement.

“During Ramadan, staff refused to let her save food for when she could break her fast, forcing her either to go hungry or to break her fast early,” Amnesty said. “She has not been provided with clothing suitable for prayer or a clean prayer space.”

Why was Kordia hospitalised?

On Friday, Abushaban said he heard about Kordia’s hospitalisation in the morning from a person formerly detained with his cousin.

Kordia had fallen, hit her head and suffered a seizure in a bathroom at the Prairieland Detention Center, he told The Dallas Morning News newspaper.

In a statement on Saturday, Kordia’s attorneys and family members demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and Prairieland Detention Center regarding her health and whereabouts.

“[Kordia] was reportedly hospitalised yesterday morning after fainting and having a seizure at the Prairieland Detention Center,” the statement said, adding: “Neither her legal team nor family have been provided answers about where she has been hospitalised, the specifics of her health status, and whether and how ICE will ensure her health upon discharge from the undisclosed, off-site hospital.”

“We have since learned that she is expected to spend another night there, but we still have not been able to speak with her directly or have any confirmation of what brought her to the hospital in the first place,” the statement said.

The family members told US media that they called all hospitals in the vicinity but could not locate Kordia.

What were the Columbia protests about?

In 2024, pro-Palestinian student encampments at Columbia University helped ignite a global movement against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The protest sites, however, were broken up after Columbia University allowed hundreds of New York City police officers on campus, leading to dozens of arrests.

The student protesters demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and the university’s divestment from companies linked to the Israeli military.

Columbia University imposed severe punishments, including expulsion and revocation of academic degrees, on dozens of students who participated in the protests. University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was criticised for the handling of the student protests, stepped down.

The protests also put Columbia at odds with the Trump administration, whose officials alleged anti-Semitism on campus. Campaigners said the campus crackdown violated US free speech rights.

Trump also cancelled millions of dollars in federal funding for the university, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students. Later, Columbia settled and agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years. In exchange, the Trump administration agreed to return parts of the $400m in grants it froze or terminated.

COLLINGSWOOD, N.J. — The shawarma, falafel wraps and baklava at Jersey Kebab are great, but many of its patrons are also there these days for a side of protest.

A New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia has rallied around the restaurant’s Turkish owners since federal officers detained the couple last February because they say their visas had expired.

In fact, business has been so good since Celal and Emine Emanet were picked up early in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that they have moved to a bigger space in the next town over. Their regulars don’t seem to mind.

The family came to the U.S. seeking freedom

Celal Emanet, 52, first came to the U.S. in 2000 to learn English while he pursued his doctorate in Islamic history at a Turkish university. He returned in 2008 to serve as an imam at a southern New Jersey mosque, bringing Emine and their first two children came, too. Two more would be born in the U.S.

Before long, Celal had an additional business of delivering bread to diners. They applied for permanent residency and believed they were on their way to receiving green cards.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began and the delivery trucks were idled, Celal and Emine, who had both worked in restaurants in Turkey, opened Jersey Kebab in Haddon Township. Business was strong from the start.

It all changed in a moment

On Feb. 25, U.S. marshals and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the couple at the restaurant. Celal was sent home with an ankle monitor, but Emine, now 47, was moved to a detention facility more than an hour’s drive away and held there for 15 days.

With its main cook in detention and the family in crisis, the shop closed temporarily.

Although the area is heavily Democratic, the arrests of the Emanets signaled to many locals that immigration enforcement during President Trump’s second term wouldn’t stop at going after people with criminal backgrounds who are in the U.S. illegally.

“They were not dangerous people — not the type of people we were told on TV they were looking to remove from our country,” Haddon Township Mayor Randy Teague said.

Supporters organized a vigil and raised $300,000 that kept the family and business afloat while the shop was closed — and paid legal bills. Members of Congress helped, and hundreds of customers wrote letters of support.

Space for a crowd

As news of the family’s ordeal spread, customers new and old began packing the restaurant. The family moved it late last year to a bigger space down busy Haddon Avenue in Collingswood.

They added a breakfast menu and for the first time needed to hire servers besides their son Muhammed.

The location changed, but the restaurant still features a sign in the window offering free meals to people in need. That’s honoring a Muslim value, to care for “anybody who has less than us,” Muhammed said.

Judy Kubit and Linda Rey, two friends from the nearby communities of Medford and Columbus, respectively, said they came to Haddon Township last year for an anti-Trump “No Kings” rally and ate a post-protest lunch at the kebab shop.

“We thought, we have to go in just to show our solidarity for the whole issue,” Kubit said.

Last month, with the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis dominating the headlines, they were at the new location for lunch.

The legal battle hasn’t ended

The Emanets desperately want to stay in the U.S., where they’ve built a life and raised their family.

Celal has a deportation hearing in March, and Emine and Muhammed will also have hearings eventually.

Celal said moving back to Turkey would be bad for his younger children. They don’t speak Turkish, and one is autistic and needs the help available in the U.S.

Also, he’d be worried about his own safety because of his academic articles. “I am in opposition to the Turkish government,” he said. “If they deport me, I am going to get very big problems.”

The groundswell of support has shown the family they’re not alone.

“We’re kind of fighting for our right to stay the country,” Muhammed Emanet said, “while still having amazing support from the community behind us. So we’re all in it together.”

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

Five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father have been released from a US immigration detention facility, following an order by a judge who accused ICE agents of traumatising children as they pursue the Trump administration’s deportation quotas.

A federal judge in the United States has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy and his father from a facility in Texas amid an outcry over their detention during an immigration raid in Minnesota.

In a decision on Saturday, US District Judge Fred Biery ruled Liam Conejo Ramos’s detention as illegal, while also condemning “the perfidious lust for unbridled power” and “the imposition of cruelty” by “some among us”.

The scathing opinion came as photos of the boy – clad in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers took him away in a suburb of the city of Minneapolis – became a symbol of the immigration crackdown launched by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” Biery wrote in his ruling.

“Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of ‌the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly ‌and humane policy than currently in place.”

The judge did not specify the deportation quota he was referring to, but Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff for policy, has previously said there was a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day.

The ongoing crackdown in the state of Minnesota is the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, according to federal officials, with some 3,000 agents deployed. The surge has prompted daily clashes between activists and immigration officers, and led to the killings of two American citizens by federal agents.

The deadly operation has sparked nationwide protests as well as mass mobilisation efforts and demonstrations in Minnesota.

According to the Columbia Heights Public School District in Minneapolis, Liam was one of at least four students detained by immigration officials in the suburb this month.

Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said ICE agents took the child from a running car in the family’s driveway on January 20, and told him to knock on the door of his home, a tactic that she said amounted to using him as “bait” for other family members.

The government has denied that account, with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claiming that an ICE officer remained with Liam “for the child’s safety” while other officers apprehended his father.

Vice President JD Vance, who has vigorously defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota, told a news conference that although such arrests were “traumatic” for children, “just because you’re a parent, doesn’t mean that you get complete immunity from law enforcement”.

The Trump administration has said that Conejo Arias arrived in the US illegally in December 2024 from Ecuador, but the family’s lawyer says they have an active asylum claim that allows them to remain in the country legally.

Following their detention, the boy and his father were sent to a facility in Dilley in Texas, where advocacy groups and politicians have reported deplorable conditions, including illnesses, malnourishment and a fast-growing number of detained children.

Texas Representatives Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett visited the site earlier this week. Liam slept throughout the 30-minute visit, Castro said, and his father reported that he was “depressed and sad”.

Biery’s ruling on Saturday included a photo of the boy, as well as several Bible quotes: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’,” and “Jesus wept”.

The episode, Biery wrote, made apparent “the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence”. Biery drew a comparison between Trump’s administration and the wrongdoings that then-author, future President Thomas Jefferson, mounted against England’s King George, including sending “Swarms of Officers to harass our People” and creating “domestic Insurrection”.

There was no immediate comment from the Department of Justice and DHS.

The Law Firm of Jennifer Scarborough, which is representing Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, said in a statement that the pair will soon be able to reunite with the rest of their family.

“We are pleased that the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal,” the statement said.

Minnesota officials have been calling on the Trump administration to end its immigration ‍crackdown in the state. But a federal judge on Saturday denied a request from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other officials to issue a preliminary injunction that would have halted the federal operation.

Trump, meanwhile, has ordered DHS to, “under no circumstances”, get involved with protests in Democratic-led cities unless they ask for federal help, or federal property is threatened.

SAN ANTONIO — A 5-year-old boy and his father must be released by Tuesday from the Texas center where they’ve been held after being detained by immigration officers in Minnesota, a federal judge ordered Saturday in a ruling that harshly criticized the Trump administration’s approach to enforcement.

Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, with a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack being surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, have been a rallying point in the outcry over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. It also led to a protest at the Texas family detention center and a visit by two Democratic members of Congress.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, an appointee of President Clinton, said in his ruling that “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Biery had previously ruled that the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, could not be removed from the U.S., at least for now.

In his order Saturday, Biery wrote: “Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence,” suggesting the Trump administration’s actions echo those that Thomas Jefferson enumerated as grievances against England.

Biery also included in his ruling a photo of Liam Conejo Ramos and references to two lines in the Bible: “Jesus said, ’Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,’” and “Jesus Wept.”

He’s not the only federal judge who has been tough on ICE recently. A Minnesota-based judge with a conservative pedigree said this week that ICE had disobeyed nearly 100 court orders in the last month.

Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff for policy, has said there’s a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day. It’s that figure that the judge seemed to describe as a “quota.”

Spokespersons from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Neighbors and school officials say that federal immigration officers in Minnesota used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security has called that description of events an “abject lie.” It said the father ran off and left the boy in a running vehicle in their driveway.

The government says the elder Arias entered the U.S. illegally in December 2024. The family’s lawyer says he has a pending asylum claim that allows him to remain in the country.

During a visit Wednesday to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, by U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett, the boy slept in the arms of his father, who said Liam was frequently tired and not eating well at the detention facility housing about 1,100 people, according to Castro.

Detained families report poor conditions including worms in food, fighting for clean water, and poor medical care at the detention center since its reopening last year. In December, a report filed by ICE acknowledged it held about 400 children longer than the recommended limit of 20 days.