June 28 (UPI) — Friends and family members of people detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are raising concerns over conditions inside detention centers in California.
One family member reported not being able to meet with his father who is being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles and instead having to leave blood pressure medication for him, CBS News reported.
CBS also quoted one immigration lawyer who collectively referred to the Los Angeles facility and others in California being used to detain thousands of people as a “ticking time bomb.”
Other family members report similar conditions faced by detainees.
“She’s saying that she’s not being fed, that she’s sleeping on a concrete floor and that her and a couple of people have to huddle in order to keep warm,” Zulma Zapeta told KTLA in an interview about her mother.
Zapeta’s 41-year-old mother Guadalupe Gutierrez, has been detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, Calif.
Zapeta claims she has not been able to provide necessary medication to Gutierrez, who has been in the United States for over two decades and does not have a criminal record.
Civil rights attorney Sergio Perez called the situation inside several of the state’s federal detention centers “cruel and inhumane,” in an interview with KABC-TV.
“I saw people waiting for hours, elderly women and men without chairs in a concrete hallway infested with flies, and not receiving any information as to how long it was going to take to view their loved ones,” Perez, executive director for the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said in the interview.
“This year alone, the number of children held for two weeks or longer, as this child and their family was, has increased sevenfold,” the center said on Facebook. “Border Patrol runs some of the harshest and cruelest prisons that will never be safe for children — making every day spent there dangerous.”
Officials are currently holding around 59,000 immigrants in federal detention centers across the country, CBS News reported this week, citing internal government data.
That puts the number of detainees being held at 140% capacity, compared to the 41,500-person figure passed by Congress.
Earlier this month, the city of Glendale, Calif., said it was terminating contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to house federal detainees at local police stations, calling the issue too “divisive.”
Private prison firm CoreCivic confirmed earlier in the month that it reached a deal with DHS and ICE to convert one of its facilities to house federal detainees. The Nashville-based company is converting its existing detention facility located in California City, in Kern County, Calif. The detention center currently has 2,560 beds for inmates.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday to block a migrant detention center being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades.
The lawsuit seeks to halt the project until it undergoes a stringent environmental review as required by federal law. There is also supposed to be a chance for public comment, according to the lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.
The center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to begin processing people who entered the U.S. illegally as soon as next week, the governor said Friday on “Fox and Friends.”
The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the Miami-Dade County-owned airfield in the Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of downtown Miami.
The lawsuit names several federal and state agencies as defendants.
Payne and Anderson write for the Associated Press.
A Central American asylum applicant arrested outside an L.A. immigration court is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for her immediate release and that of her two children, including her 6-year-old son stricken with cancer.
The Honduran woman, not named in court documents, filed a petition for writs of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of her and her family’s detention at a Texas facility. She is also asking for a preliminary injunction that would prevent her family’s immediate deportation to Honduras, as her children cry and pray nightly to be released from a Texas holding facility, according to court documents.
She and her two children, including a 9-year-old daughter, are facing two removal proceedings concurrently: a previous removal proceeding involving their asylum request and this recent expedited removal process.
The woman claims the government violated many of their rights, including the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
Her attorneys noted that DHS determined she was not a flight risk when she was paroled into the country and that her detention was unjustified.
The woman’s lawyers also argued that she was not given an opportunity to contest her family’s detention in front of a neutral adjudicator.
They also argue that the family’s 4th Amendment right to not be unlawfully arrested were violated.
The Honduran mother is being represented by several groups, including attorney Kate Gibson Kumar of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service and the immigrant advocacy group Raices Texas.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio on Tuesday.
An after-hours email to the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately answered.
One of the focal points of the lawsuit is the fate of the woman’s son.
The youth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 3 and has undergone chemotherapy treatments, including injecting chemotherapeutic agents into his cerebrospinal fluid, according to court documents.
He began treatment in Honduras and completed two years of chemotherapy, at which point the mother believes he no longer has leukemia cells in his blood, according to court documents.
The son, however, needs regular monitoring and medical care for his condition, according to court documents.
Last year, the family fled to the United States to “seek safety” after they were subject to “imminent, menacing death threats” in Honduras, according to court documents.
They applied for entrance while waiting in Mexico and received a CBP One app appointment in October to apply for asylum. They presented themselves at an undisclosed border entry, were processed and were paroled in the U.S., according to court documents.
They were scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles immigration court and moved to the area to live with family.
Both children enrolled in local public schools, attended Sunday church and were learning English, according to court documents.
The trio arrived at court May 29 for a hearing for their asylum request and were caught off guard when a Homeland Security lawyer asked for their case to be dismissed, according to court documents.
The woman told an immigration judge “we wish to continue [with our cases],” according to court documents.
The judge granted the dismissal and the Honduran mother and two children were immediately arrested by plainclothes ICE agents upon leaving the courtroom in the hallway, according to court documents. The woman had a June 5 medical appointment scheduled for her son’s cancer diagnosis, which he couldn’t attend because of the arrest.
The family was detained for hours on the first floor before being taken to an undisclosed immigration center in the city, according to court documents.
All three “cried in fear” and the young boy urinated on himself and remained in wet clothing “for hours,” according to court documents.
The trio were placed on a flight to San Antonio along with several other families. The date of the flight was not available.
After landing, the family was transported to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they have since resided.
The children have cried each night and prayed “for God to take them out of the detention center,” according to court documents.
The mother claims that the federal government did nothing to monitor her son’s leukemia for days.
Her lawyers have also sought the boy’s release for medical treatment, a request that was not fulfilled.
BALTIMORE — A federal lawsuit could open a new chapter in an escalating legal battle in Maryland, where officials are struggling to address an unexpected onslaught of claims alleging child sexual abuse in state-run juvenile detention facilities.
With thousands of similar claims already pending in state court, the litigation has raised questions about how Maryland will handle the potential financial liability.
The new federal suit, filed Wednesday on behalf of three plaintiffs, seeks $300 million in damages — an amount that far exceeds caps imposed on claims filed in state court. It alleges Maryland juvenile justice leaders knew about a culture of abuse inside youth detention facilities and failed to address it, violating the plaintiffs’ civil rights.
A message seeking comment was left Thursday with the state’s Department of Juvenile Services. The department generally doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Maryland Office of the Attorney General declined to comment.
An estimated 11,000 plaintiffs have sued in state court, according to the attorneys involved. Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson said Wednesday that he believes negotiations for a potential settlement are ongoing between attorneys for the plaintiffs and the attorney general’s office. Officials have said the state is facing a potential liability between $3 billion and $4 billion.
Lawsuits started pouring in after a state law passed in 2023 eliminated the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims in Maryland. The change came in the immediate aftermath of a scathing investigative report that revealed widespread abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It prompted the archdiocese to file for bankruptcy to protect its assets.
But Maryland leaders didn’t anticipate they’d be facing similar budgetary concerns because of claims against the state’s juvenile justice system.
Facing a potentially enormous payout, lawmakers recently passed an amendment to limit future liabilities. The new law reduces caps on settlements from $890,000 to $400,000 for cases filed after May 31 against state institutions, and from $1.5 million to $700,000 for private institutions. It allows each claimant to receive only one payment, instead of being able to collect for each act of abuse.
Suing in federal court allows plaintiffs to sidestep those limits.
“Despite Maryland’s recent unconstitutional legislative efforts to insulate itself from liability for the horrific sexual brutalization of children in its custody, Maryland cannot run from liability under Federal law,” plaintiffs’ attorney Corey Stern said in a statement. “The United States Constitution was created for all of us, knowing that some would need protection from the tyranny of their political leaders.”
The three plaintiffs in the federal case allege they were sexually abused by staff at two juvenile detention centers. While other lawsuits have mainly presented allegations of abuse occurring decades ago, the federal complaint focuses on events alleged to have happened in 2019 and 2020. The plaintiffs were 14 and 15 years old.
The victims feared their sentences would be extended if they spoke out, according to the complaint. They accuse state officials of turning a blind eye to a “culture of sexual brutalization and abuse.”
Stern said he anticipates more federal claims will be forthcoming.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida officials are pursuing plans to build a second detention center to house immigrants, as part of the state’s aggressive push to support the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he’s considering establishing a facility at a Florida National Guard training center known as Camp Blanding, about 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville in northeast Florida, in addition to the site under construction at a remote airstrip in the Everglades that state officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The construction of that facility in the remote and ecologically sensitive wetland about 45 miles west of downtown Miami is alarming environmentalists, as well as human rights advocates who have slammed the plan as cruel and inhumane.
Speaking to reporters at an event in Tampa, DeSantis touted the state’s muscular approach to immigration enforcement and its willingness to help President Trump’s administration meet its goal of more than doubling its existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds.
State officials have said the detention facility, which has been described as temporary, will rely on heavy-duty tents, trailers, and other impermanent buildings, allowing the state to operationalize 5,000 immigration detention beds by early July and free up space in local jails.
“I think the capacity that will be added there will help the overall national mission. It will also relieve some burdens of our state and local [law enforcement],” DeSantis said.
Managing the facility “via a team of vendors” will cost $245 a bed per day, or approximately $450 million a year, a U.S. official said. The expenses will be incurred by Florida and reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the eyes of DeSantis and other state officials, the remoteness of the Everglades airfield, surrounded by mosquito- and alligator-filled wetlands that are seen as sacred to Native American tribes, makes it an ideal place to detain migrants.
“Clearly, from a security perspective, if someone escapes, you know, there’s a lot of alligators,” he said. “No one’s going anywhere.”
Democrats and activists have condemned the plan as a callous, politically motivated spectacle.
“What’s happening is very concerning, the level of dehumanization,” said Maria Asuncion Bilbao, Florida campaign coordinator at the immigration advocacy group American Friends Service Committee.
“It’s like a theatricalization of cruelty,” she said.
DeSantis is relying on state emergency powers to commandeer the county-owned airstrip and build the compound, over the concerns of county officials, environmentalists and human rights advocates.
Now the state is considering standing up another site at a National Guard training facility in northeast Florida as well.
“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, adding that the state’s emergency management division is “working on that.”
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has issued travel advice for British passport holders heading to Thailand, where new visa rules came into force earlier this year
The FCDO has issued travel advice for those heading to Thailand
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has warned British travellers of new entry requirements for travel to Thailand.
At the beginning of May this year, the Southeast Asian country, which welcomed in one million Brits during its pre-pandemic peak and around 800,000 annually now, introduced a new visa system for everyone without a Thai passport.
“From 1 May 2025, all foreign nationals entering Thailand, whether by air, land or sea must complete a digital arrival card online before arrival. Travellers can register for an arrival card within 3 days before they arrive,” the FCDO explains on its website.
UK passport holders are able to visit Thailand for a period of 60 days for the purpose of tourism, business engagements, and urgent or ad-hoc work. This visa category can be extended for another period not exceeding 30 days.
However, those who overstay their visa are putting themselves in serious jeopardy, according to the FCDO.
Thailand has a lot of beautiful spots for a holiday, such as Phi-Phi island(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“If you overstay the period of your visa, you will get a fine of 500 Thai baht a day up to a maximum of 20,000 baht (£450). You risk being: held in detention, deported at your own expense, banned from re-entering Thailand for up to 10 years. Conditions in detention centres can be harsh,” the governmental organisation warns.
There are other entry rules that you’ll have to follow when travelling to Thailand.
Your passport must have an ‘expiry date’ at least six months after the date you arrive and have at least one blank page. You will be denied entry if you do not have a valid travel document or try to use a passport that has been reported lost or stolen.
If you’re a dual national, it is best to leave Thailand on the same passport you used to enter – this will avoid problems at immigration. You can also apply in advance for a multiple-entry visa for up to 60 days.
As of May this year, Thailand has reinstated the requirement for tourist visa applicants to provide financial proof. This measure, which was temporarily suspended in November 2023 to give post-pandemic travel a boost, requires that all applicants demonstrate the ability to support themselves during their stay.
According to Thailand’s official e-Visa portal, applicants must now submit financial evidence showing a minimum of 20,000 Thai Baht. Acceptable documents include bank statements from the last three months or a sponsorship letter if the trip is being financed by someone else.
Earlier this year, a British man was arrested in Thailand after overstaying his 30-day visa by more than 25 years.
The man, who is now 60 years old, arrived in Thailand on a short-term tourist visa on 9 January 2000, and then went on to evade Thai authorities for 25 years. Thai police said it was a “record” visa overstay, beating the previous record of a Pakistani man who overstayed his visa by 10 years, according to AFP news agency.
When she made it back inside the privately run facility in the Mojave desert last week, things weren’t much better.
“It is just scandalous as to how it has not improved,” she told me.
Truth be told, conditions are likely to get worse, if only because of sheer numbers and chaos. Which makes it all the more important to have elected leaders like Chu willing to put themselves on the front lines to give a voice to the truly, really voiceless.
Shortly after the unannounced visit to Adelanto by Chu and four other members of Congress a few days ago, ICE announced new rules attempting to further limit access by lawmakers to its facilities — despite clear federal law allowing them unannounced entrance to such lockups. While Chu and others have called these new curbs on access illegal, they are still likely to be enforced until and unless courts rule otherwise.
The narrow, fragile line of the judicial branch is holding, for now.
But families and even lawyers are struggling to keep track of those who vanish into these facilities, many of which — including Adelanto — are operated by private, for-profit companies raking in millions of dollars from the government.
When the Trump administration started its attack on Los Angeles a few weeks ago, Chu started receiving calls from her constituents asking for help. She represents Altadena, Pasadena and other areas where there are large populations of immigrants, and as the daughter of an immigrant, she relates.
Her mom came here from China as a 19-year-old bride. Chu’s dad was born in the United States.
“I feel such a heavy responsibility to change things for them, to change things for the better,” she said. “I am surrounded by immigrants every day. This is a district of immigrants. My relatives are immigrants. My friends are immigrants. Yes, my life is immigrants.”
A few days ago, she tried to visit the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where many of the recent protests have been focused, and where many of the people detained in Los Angeles have reportedly been held at first. She’d heard that even though it’s not meant to be more than a stopover, folks have been staying there longer.
“The fact that these raids are so severe, so massive, it just seems very obvious to me that they would not be treating the detainees in a humane way. And that’s what I wanted to find out,” she told me.
But no luck. Authorities turned her away at the door.
So a few days later she decided to show up unannounced — which is her right as a federal lawmaker — at Adelanto.
Guess what: No luck.
Officers there chained the gate shut, she said, and wouldn’t even talk to her.
“To actually just be locked out like that was unbelievable,” she said. “We shouted that we were members of Congress. We held signs up saying that we were members of Congress, and in fact, there was a car parked only a few feet away inside the facility. The job of that person was just to watch us. Wow.”
Wow indeed.
Undeterred, she came back a few days later when the gate was unlocked. This time, she drove straight inside, not asking permission.
Her staff “deliberately dropped me off inside the lobby before they knew that we were there,” she said.
She got out at the front door and was granted entry.
“The ICE agent said, ‘Oh, well, we thought you were protesters the time before,’” she said. “And that cannot be true, you know, considering all of our yelling and signs. But anyway.”
She was armed with the names of people from her district who had been detained, and she asked to see them. She got to speak to some of them, but everyone wanted her help. At the start of the year, Adelanto held only a handful of people, having been nearly closed by a court order during COVID-19. Now it holds about 1,100, and can take up to about 1,900.
“These detainees were jumping up and down trying to get our attention,” she said. What they told her was disturbing, and casually cruel. No ability to change clothes for 10 days. Filthy showers. No access to telephones because they need a PIN number and no matter how many times they request one, it never seems to materialize. No idea how long they would be held, or what would happen next.
“It could be weeks,” she said. “It could be years.”
Vanished.
“It is horrendous,” she said. “And it is ripping our communities apart,”
Indeed it is, especially in Southern California, where immigrants — documented and not — are entwined in the fabric of our lives and our communities.
Which is why people like Chu are so vital to what happens next. Not enough of our lawmakers have spoken up, much less taken action, against the erosion of civil rights and legal norms currently underway. Chu has spent a decade trying to bring accountability to immigration detention and knows this sordid industry better than any. It’s work that many never notice but that matters to the families whose loved ones are scooped up and disappeared into a system that, even in its best days, is convoluted.
“These are not the criminals and rapists that Trump promised he would get rid of,” Chu said. “These are hard-working people who are trying to make a living and doing their best to support their families. These are your friends and neighbors, and as we’ve seen, U.S. citizens have also been arrested. So next it could be you.”
Or her. Other lawmakers have been arrested and charged for attempting to enter detention centers on the East Coast, and Sen. Alex Padilla was knocked over and handcuffed recently for interrupting a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
We are in the era when questions are often met with mockery or silence — or even violence — from authorities, and everyday champions are vital. Propaganda and lies have become the norms, and few have the ability to bear witness to truth inside places of state power such as detention centers.
So it’s also an era when having people who will stand up in the face of increasing fear and chaos is the difference between being vanished for who-knows-how-long and being found.
McALLEN, Texas — Adults fighting kids for clean water, despondent toddlers, and a child with swollen feet denied a medical exam: These first-hand accounts from immigrant families at detention centers included in a motion filed by advocates Friday night are offering a glimpse of conditions at Texas facilities.
Families shared their testimonies with immigrant advocates filing a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from terminating the Flores settlement agreement, a 1990s-era policy that requires immigrant children detained in federal custody be held in safe and sanitary conditions.
The agreement could challenge President Trump’s family detention provisions in his massive tax and spending bill, which also seeks to make the detention time indefinite and comes as the administration ramps up arrests of immigrants nationwide.
“At a time when Congress is considering funding the indefinite detention of children and families, defending the Flores Settlement is more urgent than ever,” Mishan Wroe, a senior immigration attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement Friday.
Advocates with the center, as well as the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, RAICES and Children’s Rights contacted or visited children and their families held in two Texas family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes, which reopened this year.
The conditions of the family detention facilities were undisclosed until immigration attorneys filed an opposing motion Friday night before a California federal court.
The oversight of the detention facilities was possible because of the settlement, and the visits help ensure standards of compliance and transparency, said Sergio Perez, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Without the settlement, those overseeing the facilities would lose access to them and could not document what is happening inside.
Out of 90 families who spoke to RAICES, an immigration legal support group, since March, 40 expressed medical concerns, according to the court documents. Several testimonies expressed concern over water quantity and quality.
Emailed messages seeking comment were sent to the office of U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and to CoreCivic and Geo Group, the private prison companies that operate the detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes, respectively. There was no response from Bondi’s office or the operators of the facilities as of midday Saturday.
One mother was told she would have to use tap water for formula for her 9-month-old, who had diarrhea for three days after. A 16-year-old girl described people scrambling over one another for water.
“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” said the declaration from the girl held with her mother and two younger siblings at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”
Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, said Friday in a statement that the conditions “only serve to reinforce the vital need for transparent and enforceable standards and accountability measures,” citing an “unconscionable obstruction of medical care for those with acute, chronic, and terminal illnesses.”
One family with a young boy with cancer said he missed his doctor’s appointment after the family was arrested after they attended an immigration court hearing. He is now experiencing relapse symptoms, according to the motion. Another family said their 9-month-old lost more than 8 pounds while in detention for a month.
Children spoke openly about their trauma during visits with legal monitors, including a 12-year-old boy with a blood condition. He reported that his feet became too inflamed to walk, and even though he saw a doctor, he was denied further testing. Now, he stays mostly off his feet. “It hurts when I walk,” he said in a court declaration.
Arrests have left psychological trauma. A mother of a 3-year-old boy who saw agents go inside his babysitter’s home with guns started acting differently after detention. She said he now throws himself on the ground, bruises himself and refuses to eat most days.
Growing concerns as ICE ramps up operations
Many of the families in detention were already living in the U.S., reflecting the recent shift from immigration arrests at the border to internal operations.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first few months of Trump’s second term.
Leecia Welch, the deputy legal director at Children’s Rights, said that as bad as facility conditions are, they will only get worse as more immigrants are brought in.
“As of early June, the census at Dilley was around 300, and only two of its five areas were open,” Welch said of her visits. “With a capacity of around 2,400, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like with 2,000 more people.”
Pediatricians such as Dr. Marsha Griffin with the American Academy of Pediatrics Council said they are concerned and are advocating across the country to allow pediatric monitors with child welfare experts inside the facilities.
Challenge to Flores agreement
The Flores agreement is poised to become more relevant if Trump’s tax and spending legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passes with the current language allowing the indefinite detention of immigrant families, which is not allowed under the Flores agreement.
Trump’s legislation approved by the House also proposes setting aside $45 billion in funding, a threefold spending increase, over the next four years to expand ICE detention of adults and families. The Senate is now considering the bill.
Under these increased efforts to add more detention space, Geo Group, the corporation operating the detention facility in Karnes, will soon be reopening an infamous prison — which housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — for migrant detention in Leavenworth, Kan.
Immigration advocates argue that if the settlement were terminated, the government would need to create regulations that conform to the agreement’s terms.
“Plaintiffs did not settle for policy making — they settled for rulemaking,” the motion read.
The federal government will have a chance to submit a reply brief. A court hearing is scheduled for mid-July.
CONCORD, N.H. — A Palestinian activist who was detained for more than three months pushed his infant son’s stroller with one hand and pumped his fist in the air with the other as supporters welcomed him home Saturday.
Mahmoud Khalil greeted friends and spoke briefly to reporters Saturday at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey a day after a judge ordered his release from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana. The former Columbia University graduate student, a symbol of President Trump’s clampdown on campus protests, vowed to continue protesting Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
“The U.S. government is funding this genocide, and Columbia University is investing in this genocide,” he said. “This is why I will continue to protest with every one of you. Not only if they threaten me with detention. Even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.”
Khalil, a legal U.S. resident whose wife gave birth during his 104 days of detention, said he also will speak up for the immigrants he left behind in the detention center.
“Whether you are a citizen, an immigrant, anyone in this land, you’re not illegal. That doesn’t make you less of a human,” he said.
The 30-year-old international affairs student wasn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. However, the Trump administration has said noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the U.S. for expressing views it deems to be antisemitic or “pro-Hamas,” referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence. The government filed notice Friday evening that it is appealing Khalil’s release.
Joining Khalil at the airport, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said his detention violated the 1st Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”
“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” she said.
“The Trump administration knows that they are waging a losing legal battle,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “They are violating the law, and they know that they are violating the law.”
Palestinian activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was released after three months in immigration detention, following a judge’s ruling to free him amid growing backlash over Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests.
ADELANTO, Calif. — As federal immigration agents conduct mass raids across Southern California, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center is filling so rapidly it is reigniting longtime concerns about safety conditions inside the facility.
In less than two months, the number of detainees in the sprawling complex about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles has surged from around 300 near the end of April to more than 1,200 as of Wednesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
The largest detention center in California, Adelanto has for years been the focus of complaints from detainees, attorneys and state and federal inspectors about inadequate medical care, overly restrictive segregation and lax mental health services.
But now, critics — including some staff who work inside — warn that conditions inside have become increasingly unsafe and unsanitary. The facility, they say, is woefully unprepared to handle a massive increase in the number of detainees.
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“It’s dangerous,” a longtime Adelanto detention center staff member told The Times, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not want to lose their job. “We have no staffing for this and not enough experienced staff. They’re just cutting way too many corners, and it affects the safety of everybody in there.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), toured Adelanto with four other Democratic members of Congress from California amid growing concern over the rapidly increasing number of detainees and deteriorating conditions inside the facility.
The facility’s manager “has to clearly improve its treatment of these detainees,” Chu said at a news conference after inspecting the facility for nearly two hours.
Some detainees told lawmakers they were held inside Adelanto for 10 days without a change of clothes, underwear or towels, Chu said. Others said they had been denied access to a telephone to speak to loved ones and lawyers, even after repeatedly filling out forms.
“I was just really shocked to hear that they couldn’t get a change of underwear, they couldn’t get socks for 10 days,” Chu told The Times. “They can’t get the PIN number for a telephone call. What about their legal rights? What about the ability to be in contact with their families? That is inhumane.”
Immigration Customs and Enforcement and GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison corporation that manages the Adelanto detention center, did not answer The Times’ questions about staffing or conditions inside the facility. The Times also sent questions to Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin, but they were not answered.
Lucero Garcia, third from left, gave an emotional account about her uncle who was taken from his work at an Orange County car wash. She and others were outside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center on Tuesday.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Over the last two weeks, new detainees have been forced to sleep on the floors of common areas without blankets and pillows and have spent days in the facility before they were provided with clean clothes and underwear, according to interviews with current detention center staff, immigration attorneys, and members of Congress who toured the facility. Some detainees have complained about lack of access to medication, lack of access to drinking water for four hours, and being served dinner as late as 10 p.m.
One detainee was not allowed his high blood pressure pills when family tried to bring it in, said Jennifer Norris, a staff attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. In some cases, she said, lax medical care has led to emergencies: a Vietnamese man passed out last week because staff didn’t provide him with his necessary medication.
“It’s clear that with the ramp up enforcement, Adelanto just does not have the staff to keep pace with the aggressive enforcement that’s happening now,” Norris said. “It is bizarre. We spend millions of dollars on ICE detention and they’re not even able to provide basic necessities for the new arrivals.”
Long before Trump administration officials announced in May they were setting a new national goal of arresting 3,000 unauthorized immigrants a day, Adelanto workers worried about understaffing and unsafe conditions as the center processed new detainees.
At the end of last year, the facility held only three people. As of Wednesday, the number had swelled to 1,218, according to the ACLU of Southern California.
The climb is only partly due to the ICE agents’ recent escalation of immigrant raids.
The 1,940-bed Adelanto facility has been operating at a dramatically reduced capacity since 2020 when civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit demanding a drastic reduction in the number of people detained at Adelanto on the basis that they faced severe risk of contracting COVID-19. A federal judge forced the detention center to release detainees and prohibit new intakes and transfers.
But a series of federal court orders this year — the most recent in early June — has allowed the facility to fully reopen just as federal immigration agents fan out into neighborhoods and workplaces.
“As soon as the judge lifted the order, they just started slamming people in there,” an Adelanto staffer told The Times.
Eva Bitrán, director of immigrant rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said “almost everybody” held in the Adelanto facility had no criminal record before they arrived in the detention center.
“But even if they had a criminal record, even if they had served their time in criminal custody and then been brought to the ICE facility, nobody deserves 10 days in the same underwear,” Bitrán said. “Nobody deserves dirty showers, nobody deserves moldy food.”
The Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Mario Romero, an Indigenous worker from Mexico who was detained June 6 at the Ambiance Apparel warehouse in downtown L.A., was one of dozens who ended up in Adelanto.
His daughter, Yurien Contreras, said she and her family were traumatized after her father was “chained by the hands, feet and waist,” taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center downtown and then “held hostage” in a van from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. with no access to water, food or a restroom.
“Little did we know,” she said, “it was only the beginning of the inhumane treatment our families would endure.”
At Adelanto, she said, officials try to force her father to sign documents without due process or legal representation. The medical care was “less than minimal,” she said, the food was unsustainable and the water tasted like Clorox.
Yurien Contreras’ father was taken by ICE agents from his workplace at Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Lucero Garcia told The Times she was concerned about her 61-year-old uncle, Candido, who was detained June 9 as he worked at his job at Magnolia Car Wash in Fountain Valley.
But when she visited him Saturday, “he didn’t want to share much,” she said. “He’s worried more about us.”
This is not the first time the Adelanto detention center has faced scrutiny.
In 2018, federal inspectors issued a report finding “serious violations” at the facility, including overly restrictive detainee segregation and guards failing to stop detainees from hanging braided bed sheet “nooses.”
But two staffers who spoke to The Times said they had never experienced such unsafe conditions at Adelanto.
As the prison population has increased over the last few months, they said, staff are working long hours without breaks, some even falling asleep driving home after their shifts and having car accidents. Shift duty officers with no security experience were being asked to make decisions in the middle of the night about whether to put detainees who felt threatened in protective custody. Officers, including people from food service, were being sent to the hospital to check on detainees with tuberculosis and hepatitis.
“Everyone’s just overwhelmed,” a staffer said.
Officers working over their allotted schedules were often tired when they were on duty, another staffer said.
In May, a detainee went into anaphylactic shock and ended up intubated in the hospital, the staffer said, because an officer wasn’t paying attention or was new and gave the detainee, who’s allergic to seafood, a tray that contained tuna.
At a May meeting, the warden told all executive staff that they needed to come to work dressed down on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the staffer said, because they would have to start doing janitorial work.
On June 2, a detainee at the Annex facility made his way from a medical holding area, through four locked doors, all the way back to his dorm unescorted, the staffer said — a major security breach.
“If he would’ve wanted to escape he would’ve been gone,” the staffer said. “All he did is push the buttons to access the doors and they were open for him, no questions. Apparently, whoever was in central control was too tired to check or too inexperienced.”
The detention center was becoming unsanitary, the staffer said, with trash bins not promptly emptied, bathrooms not cleaned and floors not mopped as they should be.
As new waves of detainees flooded into the facility over the last two weeks, the staffer said, the facility was chaotic and lacking basic supplies.
“We didn’t have enough to provide right away,” they said, “so we’re scrambling to get clothes and mattresses.”
Mark Ferretiz, who worked as a cook supervisor at Adelanto for 14 years until April, said former colleagues told him officers were working 16- to 20-hour shifts multiple days in a row without breaks, officers were slow to respond to physical fights between detainees, and food was limited for detainees.
“They had five years to prepare,” Ferretiz, who had served as a union steward, said of his former supervisors. “I don’t know the reason why they weren’t prepared.”
While the supply shortages appeared to ease some in recent days — a shipment of clothes and mattresses had arrived by Tuesday, when members of Congress toured — the detention center was still understaffed, the current staffer said.
Detainees were being served food on paper clam-shell to-go boxes, rather than regular trays, a staffer said, because the facility lacked employees to wash up at the end of mealtimes.
“Trash pickup’s not coming fast enough, ” a staffer said, noting that piles of trash sat outside, bagged up, beside the dumpsters.
In a statement last week, GEO Group Executive Chairman George C. Zoley said fully opening the Adelanto facility would allow his company to generate about $31 million in additional annualized revenues.
“We are proud of our approximately 350 employees at the Adelanto Center, whose dedication and professionalism have allowed GEO to establish a long-standing record of providing high-quality support services on behalf of ICE in the state of California,” Zoley said.
But after touring the facility, members of Congress said officials did not provide answers to basic questions.
When Chu asked officials about whether California immigrants were being taken to other states, she said, they said, “We don’t know.”
June 20 (UPI) — Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil on Friday night was freed from federal detention in central Louisiana after a federal judge ordered his release.
In Newark, N.J., U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said that prosecutors didn’t provide a legitimate justification for 104 days of detention since March 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Syrian national organized campus protests favoring Hamas while enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, which runs counter to U.S. foreign policy.
Farbiarz, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, said it was “highly, highly unusual” the government still wanted him detained.
“Together, they suggest that there is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner – and, of course, that would be unconstitutional,” the judge said.
He was ordered to surrender his passport and travel documents, and restricted to four states and Washington, D.C.
While in detention, Khalil missed the birth of his first child in New York in April, and he was allowed to hold him while in custody in May. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
Just before 8 p.m. CDT, Khalil walked out of the detention center in Jena, La., about 220 miles northwest of New Orleans, with his lawyers and wearing a kaffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.
He said no person “should actually be detained for protesting a genocide,” Khalil said. “Justice will prevail.”
“After more than three months we can finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Mahmoud is on his way home to me and Deen, who never should have been separated from his father,” Dr. Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife, said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. “We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family, and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”
Alina Das, one of Khalil’s lawyers and co-director of New York University’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, said: “The purpose of every step that the government has taken in this case has been to ensure that Mr. Khalil remains locked away until he is deported, as retaliation and punishment for his speech.”
After the birth of his son Deen, he wrote: “During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?
“Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth.”
He was arrested outside student housing on the campus.
On June 11, Farbiarz ordered Khalil’s release after determining that the government could no longer detain him over the claim he is a threat to the country’s foreign policy.
Then two days later, Trump administration said Khalil could be detained because they said he kept some prior work off his application for permanent residency. The judge allowed the detention to continue.
The Justice Department wanted him detained until an immigration judge could weigh the matter, claiming tFarbiarz does not have jurisdiction.
Farbiarz said it would be a “waste of time” to send the case to an immigration judge who would likely reach his same conclusion.
Other pro-Palestinian activists have also been released as their immigration cases go through the courts.
In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a memo, citing an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The secretary of state can deport noncitizens if the secretary determines their presence in the country would result in “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The arrest was carried out by the ICE, which is part of Homeland Security.
Khalil, who was born in 1995, grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and was granted permanent U.S. resident status. H
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. government to free former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the immigration detention center where he has been held since early March while the Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.
Ruling from the bench in New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue to detain a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
In reaching his decision, he said Khalil is likely not a flight risk and “is not a danger to the community. Period, full stop.”
He ordered Khalil released from a detention center in rural Louisiana later Friday.
The government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention, he said later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone.
Khalil was the first arrest under President Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.
Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn’t deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Khalil disputes the accusations that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.
Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from a Louisiana jail to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both U.S. citizens.
The judge noted Khalil is now clearly a public figure given his prominence during the campus protests and since his detainment.
He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech.
Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists. He wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.
The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.
The judge noted Khalil has no criminal record and the government has put forward no evidence to suggest he’s been involved in violence or property destruction.
WASHINGTON — The day after immigration raids began in Los Angeles, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) and three other members of Congress were denied entry to the immigrant detention facility inside the Roybal Federal Building.
The lawmakers were attempting an unannounced inspection, a common and long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said too many protesters were present on June 7 and officers deployed chemical agents multiple times. In a letter later to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Torres said she ended up in the emergency room for respiratory treatment. She also said the protest had been small and peaceful.
Torres is one of many Democratic members of Congress, from states including California, New York and Illinois, who have been denied entry to immigrant detention facilities in recent weeks.
Jim Townsend, director of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University in Michigan, said the denials mark a profound — and illegal — shift from past practice.
“Denying members of Congress access to facilities is a direct assault on our system of checks and balances,” he said. “What members of Congress are trying to do now is to be part of a proud bipartisan tradition of what we like to call oversight by showing up.”
Subsequent attempts by lawmakers to inspect the facility inside the Roybal Building have also been unsuccessful.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), who was with Torres the day she was hospitalized, went back twice more — on June 9 and on Tuesday — and was rebuffed. Torres and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) tried at separate times Wednesday and were both denied.
Gomez and other Democrats have pointed to a federal statute, detailed in yearly appropriations packages since 2020, which states that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens …”
The statute also states that nothing in that section “may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility” for the purpose of conducting oversight. Under the statute, federal officials may require at least 24 hours notice for a visit by congressional staff — but not members themselves.
Under ICE guidelines published this month for members of Congress and their staff, the agency requests at least 72 hours notice from lawmakers and requires at least 24 hours notice from staff.
The agency says it has discretion to deny or reschedule a visit if an emergency arises or the safety of the facility is jeopardized, though such contingencies are not mentioned in the law.
Gomez said an ICE official called him Tuesday to say that oversight law doesn’t apply to the downtown L.A. facility because it is a field office, not a detention facility.
“Well it does say Metropolitan Detention Center right here in big, bold letters,” he says in a video posted afterward on social media, gesturing toward a sign outside the building. “But they say this is a processing center. So I smell bull—.”
Department of Homeland Security police patrol the street after detaining a protester at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. on June 12.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
If no one is technically being detained, Gomez said he rhetorically asked the official during their call, are they free to leave?
Torres visited the facility in February by setting up an appointment, her staff said. She got another appointment for last Saturday, but ICE canceled it because of the protests. When members emailed ICE to set up a new appointment, they got no response.
Gomez said he believes ICE doesn’t want lawmakers to see field offices because of poor conditions and lack of attorney access because of ramped-up arrests that have reportedly left some detainees there overnight without beds and limited food.
In some cases, lawmakers have had success showing up unannounced. On Friday, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) toured the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, north of San Bernardino. After being denied entry to the Adelanto Facility on June 8, Chu and four other California Democrats were allowed in on Tuesday.
“Just because ICE has opened their doors to a few members of Congress does not excuse their inflammatory tactics to meet deportation quotas,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), who visited Adelanto with Chu. “Accountability means showing a consistent pattern of accessibility, not just a one-off event.”
The representatives learned the facility is now at full capacity with 1,100 detainees, up from 300 a month ago. Chu said they spoke to detainees from the L.A. raids, who she said were not criminals and who are now living in inhumane conditions — without enough food, unable to change their underwear for 10 days or to call their families and lawyers.
Chu said the group arrived early and stood in the lobby to avoid a repeat of their previous attempt, when facility guards kept them off the property by locking a fence.
Tom Homan, President Trump’s border policy advisor, departs a meeting with Republican senators who are working to cancel $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress at the Capitol in Washington on June 11.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
In an interview with The Times this month, Trump’s chief border policy advisor Tom Homan said members of Congress are welcome to conduct oversight, but that they must contact the facility first to make arrangements. The agency has to look after the safety and security of the facility, officers and detainees, he said.
“Please go in and look at them,” he said. “They’re the best facilities that money can buy, the highest detention standards in the industry. But there’s a right way and wrong way to do it.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a statement to The Times that requests for visits are needed because “ICE law enforcement have seen a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”
She added that requests for visits should be made with enough time — “a week is sufficient” — to not interfere with the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution to oversee executive branch functions.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan, left, and acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference in Washington on May 21.
“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time,” he wrote. “They are therefore facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”
Townsend, the congressional oversight expert, said the practice goes back to when President Truman was a senator and established a committee to investigate problems among contractors who were supplying the World War II effort.
“That committee conducted hundreds of field visits, and they would show up unannounced in many instances,” Townsend said.
More recently, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) drove to the Pentagon in 1983 and demanded access to ask questions about overspending after being stonewalled, he said, by Department of Defense officials.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to mean that Congress has wide authority to conduct oversight to show up unannounced in order to secure accurate information, Townsend said.
National Guard members stand at post at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 10.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration is trying to hide the truth from the public. Last week, Padilla was shoved out of a news conference, forced to the ground and handcuffed after attempting to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“The Trump administration has done everything in their power but to provide transparency to the American people about their mission in Los Angeles,” he said during an impassioned floor speech Wednesday in which he cried recounting the ordeal.
In an interview Wednesday with Newsmax, McLaughlin accused Democratic lawmakers of using oversight as an excuse to stage publicity stunts.
“The Democrats are reeling,” she said. “They have no actual message and so they’re doing this to get more attention and to manufacture viral moments.”
On Tuesday, Gomez wore a suit jacket with his congressional lapel pin and carried his congressional ID card and business card in his hand — “so there would be no mistake” as to who he was. He said he was concerned that what happened to Padilla could also happen to him. He was denied access anyway.
Gomez said federal officials should be fined each time they deny oversight access to members of Congress. He said he and other members are also discussing whether to file a lawsuit to compel access.
“When you have an administration that is operating outside the bounds of the law, they’re basically saying, ‘What recourse do you have? Can you force us? You don’t have an army. We don’t need to listen to you,’” Gomez said. “Then you have to put some real teeth into it.”
Times staff writer Nathan Solis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Leavenworth, Kan., occupies a mythic space in American crime, its name alone evoking a shorthand for serving hard time. The federal penitentiary housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — in a building so storied that it inspired the term “the big house.”
Now Kansas’ oldest city could soon be detaining far less famous people, migrants swept up in President Trump’s promise of mass deportations of those living in the U.S. illegally.
The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth as part of a surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued without seeking competitive bids.
ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” for thousands more detention beds, and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the Nashville area and another giant firm, the Geo Group Inc., headquartered in southern Florida.
That push faces resistance. Leavenworth filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic after it tried to reopen without city officials signing off on the deal, quoting a federal judge’s past description of the now-shuttered prison as a “hell hole.” The case in Leavenworth serves as another test of the limits of the Republican president’s unusually aggressive tactics to force migrant removals.
To get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts. One pays $73 million to a company led by former federal immigration officials for “immigration enforcement support teams” to handle administrative tasks, such as helping coordinate removals, triaging complaints or telling ICE if someone is a risk to community safety.
Just last week, Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants — and earn $66 million in annual revenue.
“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” said CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during an earnings call last month with shareholders.
A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation measure approved last month by the House includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention, a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that legislation.
Declaring an emergency to expedite contracts
When Trump started his second term in January, CoreCivic and Geo had around 20 idle facilities, partly because of sentencing reforms that reduced prison populations. But the Trump administration wants to more than double the existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds and — if private prison executives’ predictions are accurate — possibly to more than 150,000.
ICE declared a national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico as part of its justification for authorizing nine five-year contracts for a combined 10,312 beds without “Full and Open Competition.”
Only three of the nine potential facilities were listed in ICE’s document: Leavenworth, a 2,560-bed CoreCivic-owned facility in California City and an 1,800-bed Geo-owned prison in Baldwin, Mich.
The agreement for the Leavenworth facility hasn’t been released, nor have documents for the other two sites. CoreCivic and Geo Group officials said last month on earnings calls that ICE used what are known as letter contracts, meant to speed things up when time is critical.
Charles Tiefer, a contract expert and professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School, said letter contracts normally are reserved for minor matters, not the big changes he sees ICE making to previous agreements.
“I think that a letter contract is a pathetic way to make big important contracts,” he said.
A Kansas prison town becomes a priority
CoreCivic’s Leavenworth facility quickly became a priority for ICE and the company because of its central location. Leavenworth, with 37,000 residents, is only 10 miles to the west of the Kansas City International Airport. The facility would hold men and women and is within ICE’s area of operations for Chicago, 420 miles to the northeast.
“That would mean that people targeted in the Chicago area and in Illinois would end up going to this facility down in Kansas,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Prisons have long been an important part of Leavenworth’s economy, employing hundreds of workers to guard prisoners held in two military facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail within six miles of city hall.
Resistance from Trump country
The Leavenworth area’s politics might have been expected to help CoreCivic. Trump carried its county by more than 20 percentage points in each of his three campaigns for president.
But skeptical city officials argue that CoreCivic needs a special use permit to reopen its facility. CoreCivic disagrees, saying that it doesn’t because it never abandoned the facility and that the permitting process would take too long. Leavenworth sued the company to force it to get one, and a state-court judge issued an order requiring it earlier this month.
An attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said the legal fight indicates how much ill will CoreCivic generated when it held criminal suspects there for trials in federal court for the U.S. Marshals Service.
In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees in its Leavenworth facility after then-President Biden, a Democrat, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the use of private prisons. In the months before the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders detailed stabbings, suicides, a homicide and inmate rights violations in a letter to the White House. CoreCivic responded at the time that the claims were “false and defamatory.”
Vacancies among correctional officers were as high as 23%, according to a Department of Justice report from 2017.
“It was just mayhem,” recalled William Rogers, who worked as a guard at the CoreCivic facility in Leavenworth from 2016-20. He said repeated assaults sent him to the emergency room three times, including once after a blow to the head that required 14 staples.
The critics have included a federal judge
When Leavenworth sued CoreCivic, it opened its lawsuit with a quote from U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson — an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican — who said of the prison: “The only way I could describe it frankly, what’s going on at CoreCivic right now is it’s an absolute hell hole.”
The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment. It said that sheets and towels from the facility clogged up the wastewater system and that CoreCivic impeded the city police force’s ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent crimes.
The facility had no inmates when CoreCivic gave reporters a tour earlier this year, and it looked scrubbed top to bottom and the smell of disinfectant hung in the air. One unit for inmates had a painting on one wall featuring a covered wagon.
During the tour, when asked about the allegations of past problems, Misty Mackey, a longtime CoreCivic employee who was tapped to serve as warden there, apologized for past employees’ experiences and said the company officials “do our best to make sure that we learn from different situations.”
ICE moves quickly across the U.S.
Besides CoreCivic’s Leavenworth prison, other once-shuttered facilities could come online near major immigrant population centers, from New York to Los Angeles, to help Trump fulfill his deportation plans.
ICE wants to reopen existing facilities because it’s faster than building new ones, said Marcela Hernandez, the organizing director for the Detention Watch Network, which has organized nationwide protests against ICE detention.
Counties often lease out jail space for immigrant detention, but ICE said some jurisdictions have passed ordinances barring that.
ICE has used contract modifications to reopen shuttered lockups like the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility in Newark, N.J., and a 2,500-bed facility in Dilley, Texas, offering no explanations why new, competitively bid contracts weren’t sought.
The Newark facility, with its own history of problems, resumed intakes May 1, and disorder broke out at the facility Thursday night. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who previously was arrested there and accused of trespassing, cited reports of a possible uprising, and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed four escapes.
The contract modification for Dilley, which was built to hold families and resumed operations in March, calls its units “neighborhoods” and gives them names like Brown Bear and Blue Butterfly.
The financial details for the Newark and Dilley contract modifications are blacked out in online copies, as they for more than 50 other agreements ICE has signed since Trump took office. ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment.
From idle prisons to a ‘gold rush’
Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump’s reelection in November, CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%.
“It’s the gold rush,” Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons. “All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you’re the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.”
Geo’s former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders.
CoreCivic, which along with Geo donated millions of dollars to largely GOP candidates at all levels of government and national political groups, is equally optimistic. It began daily talks with the Trump administration immediately after the election in November, said Hininger.
CoreCivic officials said ICE’s letter contracts provide initial funding to begin reopening facilities while the company negotiates a longer-term deal. The Leavenworth deal is worth $4.2 million a month to the company, it disclosed in a court filing.
Tiefer, who served on an independent commission established to study government contracting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said ICE is “placing a very dicey long-term bet” because of its past problems and said ICE is giving CoreCivic “the keys to the treasury” without competition.
But financial analysts on company earnings calls have been delighted. When CoreCivic announced its letter contracts, Joe Gomes, of the financial services firm Noble Capital Markets, responded with, “Great news.”
“Are you hiding any more of them on us?” he asked.
Hollingsworth and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan. AP writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and Morgan Lee, in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed to this report.
NEWARK, N.J. — Protesters outside a New Jersey federal immigration detention center locked arms and pushed against barricades as vehicles passed through gates, inmates inside relayed word that meals had been delayed, and Newark’s mayor cited reports of a possible uprising and escape as disorder broke out at the facility.
Much is still unclear about what unfolded at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened a 1,000-bed facility this year as part of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Photos and video from outside the facility Thursday show protesters pushing against the gates amid word that detainees inside were upset about delayed meals.
Amy Torres, executive director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, said some officers sprayed pepper spray and tackled and dragged protesters away from the facility. She said some protesters had minor injuries, but no one was hit by the vehicles.
An attorney for someone detained at the facility told NJ.com people inside became violent after meals were delayed.
“It’s about the food, and some of the detainees were getting aggressive and it turned violent,” attorney Mustafa Cetin said. “Based on what he told me it was an outer wall, not very strong, and they were able to push it down.”
Attorneys with clients inside Delaney Hall have had calls canceled and have not been able to get inside the facility Friday, according to Araceti Argueta, a spokesperson for the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit that represents immigrants.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who’s been critical of Trump’s immigration crackdown, early Friday called for an end to this “chaos and not allow this operation to continue unchecked.”
“We are concerned about reports of what has transpired at Delaney Hall this evening, ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees,” he said.
It’s unclear whether there have been any escapes.
In a statement issued Friday, American Friends Service Committee said people inside the facility reported getting small portions of food, with breakfast at 6 a.m., dinner at 10 p.m. and no lunch.
Messages seeking comment were left with ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and local police.
GEO Group, which owns the facility referred questions to ICE.
ICE housed more than 53,000 people nationwide at the end of May, its latest public figures, which is well above its budgeted capacity of about 41,000 and approaching all-time highs.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said late last month that ICE should make at least 3,000 arrests a day. That would mark a dramatic increase from Jan. 20 to May 19, when the agency made an average of 656 arrests a day.
Delaney Hall has been the cite of clashes this year between Democratic officials who say the facility needs more oversight and the administration and those who run the facility.
Baraka was arrested May 9, handcuffed and charged with trespassing. The charge was later dropped and Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was later charged with assaulting federal officers stemming from a skirmish that happened outside the facility. She has denied the charges said she was doing her job as a lawmaker conducting oversight.
NEWARK, N.J. — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor on Tuesday over his arrest on a trespassing charge at a federal immigration detention facility, saying the Trump-appointed attorney had pursued the case out of political spite.
Baraka, who leads New Jersey’s biggest city, is a candidate in a crowded primary field for the Democratic nomination for governor next Tuesday. The lawsuit against interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba coincided with the day early in-person voting began.
The lawsuit seeks damages for “false arrest and malicious prosecution,” and also accuses Habba of defamation for comments she made about his case, which was later dropped.
Citing a post on X in which Habba said Baraka “committed trespass,” the lawsuit says Habba issued a “defamatory statement” and authorized his “false arrest” despite “clear evidence that Mayor Baraka had not committed the petty offense of ‘defiant trespass.’” The suit also names Ricky Patel, the Homeland Security Investigations agent in charge in Newark. Baraka’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, said they also expect to sue President Trump’s administration but are required to wait six months.
“This is not about revenge,” Baraka said during a news conference. “Ultimately, I think this is about them taking accountability for what has happened to me.”
Emails seeking comment were left Tuesday with Habba’s office and the Homeland Security Department, where Patel works.
Videos capture chaos outside the detention center
The episode outside the Delaney Hall federal immigration detention center has had dramatic fallout. It began on May 9 when Baraka tried to join three Democratic members of Congress — Rob Menendez, LaMonica McIver and Bonnie Watson Coleman — who went to the facility for an oversight tour, something authorized under federal law. Baraka, an outspoken critic of Trump’s immigration crackdown and the detention center, was denied entry.
Video from the event showed him walking from the facility side of the fence to the street side, where other people had been protesting. Uniformed officials then came to arrest him. As they did, people could be heard urging the group to protect the mayor. The video shows a crowd forming and pushing as officials led off a handcuffed Baraka.
He was initially charged with trespass, but Habba dropped that charge last month and charged McIver with two counts of assaulting officers stemming from her role in the skirmish at the facility’s gate.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Andre Espinosa rebuked Habba’s office after moving to dismiss the charges. “The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrisome misstep by your Office,” he wrote.
McIver decried the charges and signaled she plans to fight them. A preliminary hearing is scheduled later this month.
Baraka said the aftermath of the withdrawn charge meant he had to explain it in the media and argue his case when he had done nothing wrong.
“I want somebody to apologize, write a letter, say this was wrong, come out and say, ‘We shouldn’t have done this,’” he said.
New Jersey targeted over its so-called sanctuary policies
Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility, opened earlier this year as a federal immigration detention facility. Florida-based Geo Group Inc., which owns and operates the property, was awarded a 15-year contract valued at $1 billion in February. The announcement was part of the president’s plans to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from a budget of about 41,000 beds this year.
Baraka sued Geo soon after that deal was announced.
Then, on May 23, the Trump Justice Department filed a suit against Newark and three other New Jersey cities over their so-called sanctuary policies. There is no legal definition for sanctuary city policies, but they generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers.
New Jersey’s attorney general has a statewide directive in place prohibiting local police from collaborating in federal civil immigration matters. The policies are aimed at barring cooperation on civil enforcement matters, not at blocking cooperation on criminal matters. They specifically carve out exceptions for when Immigration and Customs Enforcement supplies police with a judicial criminal warrant. The Justice Department said, though, the cities won’t notify ICE when they’ve made criminal arrests, according to the suit.
It’s unclear whether Baraka’s role in these fights with the White House is affecting his campaign for governor. He’s one of six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in the June 10 election to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
On Tuesday, Baraka explained the timing of the suit as an effort to get the case before the court before it was too late. He described the arrest and fallout as a distraction during the campaign.
“But I also think that us not responding is consent,” he said.
In a video ad in the election’s final weeks, Baraka has embraced a theme his rivals are also pushing: affordability. He says he’ll cut taxes. While some of the images show him standing in front of what appears to be Delaney Hall, he doesn’t mention immigration or the arrest specifically, saying: “I’ll keep Trump out of your homes and out of your lives.”
Trump has endorsed Jack Ciattarelli, one of several Republicans running in the gubernatorial primary. Ciattarelli has said if he’s elected, his first executive order would be to end any sanctuary policies for immigrants in the country illegally.
Catalini writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
