An Albanian man’s ache grew so insufferable, he mentioned, he pulled out his personal tooth as he languished for months in a New Mexico immigration detention middle. A Honduran mom of two mentioned she was hospitalized for a coronary heart downside after she was denied blood strain drugs whereas held in Florida. A Venezuelan man mentioned his leg grew purple and swollen from flesh-eating micro organism when staffers at a Vermont facility didn’t deliver him to a scheduled physician appointment.
A whole bunch of detainees throughout at the very least 33 states allege in federal fits that immigration detention services are failing to offer satisfactory medical care, an investigation by KFF Well being Information and The Related Press discovered. Detainees say they didn’t get drugs on time — or in any respect — for circumstances together with hypertension, diabetes, melancholy, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and HIV. Requests for assist went unanswered for weeks. Blood sugars rose. Infections festered. Cancers remained untreated. Detainees collapsed and had seizures.
U.S. jails and immigration detention facilities have lengthy struggled to fulfill the medical wants of the folks of their cost. However the system is sagging beneath an inflow of detentions since President Donald Trump returned to workplace: Greater than 75,000 immigrants had been being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of mid-January, up from round 40,000 a 12 months earlier.
KFF Well being Information and AP analyzed hundreds of courtroom circumstances filed since Trump’s second inauguration that use a authorized route referred to as habeas corpus to argue persons are being held illegally by ICE. The data provide a uncommon window into how these detained say, usually beneath penalty of perjury, ICE is dealing with their medical wants. Reporters additionally interviewed greater than 50 detainees, relations, and attorneys.
The investigation revealed that medical neglect is alleged throughout the sprawling detention system, together with in places of work not designed to deal with folks, county jails, and rapidly staged websites with nicknames resembling “Alligator Alcatraz.”
ICE custody is deadlier than it has been in 20 years, researchers wrote in JAMA in April. The Division of Homeland Safety reported 51 folks had died in detention because the begin of Trump’s second administration — with suicides spiking to an unprecedented quantity.
KFF Well being Information and AP requested DHS to answer the findings six days earlier than publication, but it surely didn’t present remark. The division’s performing Chief Medical Officer Sean Conley has beforehand mentioned “it is both policy and longstanding practice for aliens to receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody” and that the company recruits healthcare professionals to take care of excessive requirements. “This is better, more responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever received in their entire lives,” he has mentioned.
Particular person services and personal jail firms contracting with DHS that responded to requests for remark mentioned they observe ICE requirements and detainees obtain medical care when it’s required. Some mentioned they had been unfamiliar with the allegations outlined in courtroom paperwork; others blamed some detainees for lapses of their medical care.
“I have never seen such disregard or medical neglect like this anywhere,” Vardan Gukasian, a political dissident and former paramedic who spent years behind bars in Armenia, wrote in a courtroom declaration in March to contest his detention in Henderson, Nevada, because it stretched to 13 months regardless of well being issues.
Madeleine Skains, a spokesperson for the town of Henderson, mentioned medical care is at all times accessible on the facility and that the courtroom had not ordered modifications to his care.
Final June, as Gukasian skilled the signs of uncontrolled hypertension — dizziness, a nosebleed, and a headache — his cellmate banged on their door for assist.
“When it did not arrive, the rest of the block banged on their doors,” he wrote. Gukasian was hospitalized that day.
‘Brazen Indifference to Really Obvious Problems’
The administration’s mass deportation effort has swept up a whole lot of hundreds of individuals throughout routine immigration check-ins, at site visitors stops, at their houses, and in hospitals.
About 70% of detainees don’t have any legal conviction. Their immigration proceedings are civil, not legal.
“I couldn’t understand why they treated me so harshly,” mentioned a father of six in Georgia. He mentioned he was injured whereas shackled in custody when the automobile transporting him to an Atlanta facility jolted, throwing him out of his seat and right into a steel armrest. His wound grew to become contaminated with E. coli, he mentioned, as a result of he needed to sleep on a unclean concrete ground amid leaking bogs.
Like different detainees interviewed, he spoke on the situation of anonymity; they mentioned they concern for his or her security, for the security of their households, or that talking out would jeopardize their immigration circumstances. The AP and KFF Well being Information are usually not naming anybody recognized in courtroom paperwork with out their consent.
Staffers at Stewart Detention Middle in rural Lumpkin, Georgia, didn’t adequately reply to that man’s request for medical assist, a courtroom submitting says, till he handed out and was taken to a hospital about an hour away. There, he mentioned, a physician advised him he’d narrowly escaped amputation of his left leg. Medical employees discovered no data of a case matching this description, in line with Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, which runs the ability.
The 48-year-old, who moved to the U.S. from Guatemala greater than 20 years in the past, was launched in October and is now a authorized everlasting resident. However he’s not sure if he’ll be capable of return to his job in building as a result of, he mentioned, he can not carry heavy issues as a result of his damage.
Some detainees or their attorneys mentioned even fundamental care was denied: gauze to guard an open foot wound, prenatal take care of a high-risk being pregnant, a pillow to ease the ache of sleeping with superior abdomen most cancers, sanitary pads for postpartum bleeding.
“I would like to believe the government has the best interest of those it holds in detention for whatever period of time,” Decide Benita Pearson, a federal decide in Ohio, mentioned throughout a listening to in October regarding a 70-year-old who alleged the federal government misplaced her glasses throughout her arrest. “If one is unable to see due to the loss of glasses when detained, that should be fixed.”
Dora Schriro, who labored for ICE and now serves as a particular adviser to the American Bar Affiliation, mentioned case regulation requires the federal government to deal with folks in immigration detention with the identical care it affords these in conventional jails awaiting trial. However directors are granted discretion and medical care requirements range.
Detainees are incessantly moved throughout the nation, usually with out warning, interrupting remedy. A girl from El Salvador mentioned she missed every week of HIV remedy when she was transferred from Colorado to a county jail in Wyoming.
A Russian man wrote that, whereas detained in Texas, he noticed a gastroenterologist about his painful gallstones and scheduled an appointment with a surgeon. “Unfortunately, I never got to see him, due to my being moved around various detention centers.”
Advocates say that even apparent disabilities, like authorized blindness, are ignored.
A detainee who misplaced one eye and had extreme glaucoma within the different required twice-daily drops to take care of what imaginative and prescient remained. However, he mentioned, some days the drops by no means got here.
“Now I can only see a little bit straight in front. It now often looks like I’m seeing through gauze,” the person wrote in a courtroom declaration. “This makes me very afraid that one of these times I am going to open my eyes and not be able to see anything at all.”
He wrote that he was scared he wouldn’t be capable of see his toddler son develop up.
“It’s just sort of brazen indifference to really obvious problems, things you would have thought absurd a decade ago — like the fact that you can’t see,” the person’s legal professional, Brian Hoffman, mentioned. “Before, you could attempt to work with folks on the government side and maybe shame them into doing the right thing. Now, it’s sort of like anything you want done you have to go to court and sue over.”
Even courtroom orders aren’t at all times sufficient. One California decide ordered the federal government to take a person displaying indicators of prostate most cancers to a specialist for analysis and remedy. Data present they didn’t take him.
Attorneys representing ICE advised the decide that officers missed the appointment due to an “internal scheduling error.” CoreCivic, which runs that facility, mentioned it was unable to touch upon energetic litigation.
A Surge in Circumstances
When immigrants file habeas corpus petitions, they train a proper to problem illegal imprisonment that dates again to medieval instances.
Greater than 40,000 such petitions have been filed throughout Trump’s second time period, fueled by choices final 12 months to disclaim bond to many individuals held on immigration prices. Judges are cut up on whether or not that’s authorized; the query seems headed to the Supreme Courtroom.
Many habeas claims have been profitable, however judges usually cite causes unrelated to the medical neglect described within the petitions, resembling detainees’ being held too lengthy earlier than being deported.
The greater than 300 medical neglect claims discovered on this investigation characterize a fraction of the issue. The small print of habeas corpus circumstances are sometimes hidden as a result of a federal rule barring the general public from viewing such paperwork on-line. KFF Well being Information and the AP obtained some paperwork from courthouses and obtained data on 4,400 circumstances from Habeas Dockets, a challenge of the nonprofit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative. However tens of hundreds extra stay largely inaccessible.
Some judges have written that the habeas course of isn’t the right way to increase allegations of medical neglect and have declined to launch detainees over these claims. Not each detainee who believes they skilled medical neglect information a habeas petition or cites their medical points in the event that they do.
Jose-Antonio Segismundo’s petition made no point out of being unable to see an oncologist for the most cancers in his stomach whereas detained for greater than seven months on the Florida detention facility referred to as Alligator Alcatraz and Folkston D Ray ICE Processing Middle in Georgia. Medical data in his courtroom filings present he was arrested about 5 weeks earlier than his scheduled appointment with a most cancers specialist.
His spouse, Maria Jose Gonzalez, mentioned he didn’t obtain any remedy although she despatched his medical data and defined his situation to officers at Folkston. When his abdomen ache erupted, usually immediately and intensely, she mentioned, they gave him Tylenol.
Geo Group, which runs Folkston, follows ICE requirements and supplies healthcare and entry to off-site medical specialists when wanted, spokesperson Christopher Ferreira mentioned.
This spring, Segismundo, 48, was deported to Mexico, a rustic he left practically 30 years in the past, Gonzalez mentioned. Now, she mentioned, he must restart his seek for care within the Oaxacan village the place he grew up.
Watching Cherished Ones Deteriorate
Detainees receiving insufficient healthcare have little recourse. The Division of Homeland Safety final 12 months gutted the Workplace of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. In early Might, it shut the workplace solely, arguing that Congress didn’t fund it.
Beforehand, ombudsman staffers may assist facilitate medical care or look into complaints of neglect, in line with Matt Boles, an immigration legal professional in Georgia. Now, he mentioned, there’s nobody to name.
In the meantime, detainees’ households mentioned they really feel helpless, making determined calls to services, the federal government, and their legislators whereas watching their family members deteriorate.
Riya Khan noticed her mom get sicker on the California Metropolis Detention Facility, which is owned by CoreCivic. When she visited every week after her mom arrived on the facility within the Mojave Desert, Riya mentioned, the 64-year-old lady stumbled into her seat. She was shaking and her respiratory was labored.
Masuma Khan got here to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 1997. She has no legal historical past, her data say, and was detained in October when she confirmed up for her common ICE check-in.
For the month she was detained, in line with her daughter, she solely intermittently obtained her drugs for circumstances together with hypertension, hypothyroidism, and prediabetes. CoreCivic treats persistent circumstances in step with relevant medical requirements, Todd mentioned.
“Nothing matters more to CoreCivic than the health, safety and well-being of the people in our care,” Todd mentioned.
Khan mentioned she obtained her bronchial asthma remedy for the primary time two days earlier than she was launched and that her eye drops for glaucoma by no means arrived. Staffers advised Khan she wanted to purchase a few of her drugs from the commissary but it surely didn’t inventory them, her daughter mentioned.
Earlier than ICE detained Masuma Khan, she made mates with everybody, her daughter mentioned. She had labored for years at Fortunate Boy, an iconic Pasadena fast-food restaurant, and in her free time fed birds and overlooked fruit for bees that visited her condo’s balcony.
Now she’s too scared to go exterior. She nonetheless should repeatedly examine in with ICE, and he or she’s terrified every time.
A Stroke on a Video Name
Beforehand, detainees with severe medical wants would seemingly have been launched on humanitarian parole, partly to keep away from the price of their care, Vermont legal professional Andrew Pelcher mentioned.
In fiscal 12 months 2023 — earlier than the detained inhabitants soared — ICE spent greater than $390 million on healthcare for detained noncitizens, in line with its most up-to-date annual report to Congress. In Might, Todd Lyons, then performing director of ICE, mentioned at a convention that the company had already spent “almost half a billion dollars” on detainee healthcare this 12 months.
Now, beneath “mandatory detention,” persons are staying locked up with severe — and costly — circumstances.
A Romanian citizen underwent a number of coronary heart surgical procedures, together with an emergency triple bypass in April 2025, earlier than he was arrested in July. As a part of his restoration, the 52-year-old was required to take 16 day by day drugs. Whereas at an ICE subject workplace in Baltimore, his courtroom filings allege, he went two days with none remedy earlier than officers moved him to a facility in New Jersey.
He was hospitalized thrice whereas detained, complaining of chest pains — partly, medical data and courtroom paperwork say, as a result of regardless of “countless requests,” the detention middle didn’t present all his drugs. Hospital discharge papers cited by his lawyer present he obtained solely eight of the 16 drugs after his second launch from the hospital.
“Can you please talk to the ICE facility to make sure they give him his medications?” his remedy suppliers wrote in medical data included in his courtroom filings. “He was admitted last week for chest pain and today he was readmitted again for chest pain secondary to non compliance for medications.”
A number of weeks later in August, he had a stroke whereas on a video name together with his daughter, in line with courtroom filings. “He was struggling to breathe, and was pointing at his chest where he was again experiencing pain, and suddenly stopped speaking.” His daughter screamed for assist by means of the video monitor, in line with his petition. “Eventually an officer came in to assist him and cut the feed.”
The person misplaced his means to talk for 4 days, the doc says. He was returned to detention, the place he remained till a federal decide ordered his launch in November.
Unimaginable Decisions
Cassandra Amador waits for the telephone to ring each morning, determined to ask her husband the query that’s woken her up each evening for months: “Did you get your medicine?”
Her husband, Pedro Javier Amador Gutierrez, 36, has hypertension and will depend on the state-run facility in Florida nicknamed “Deportation Depot” to manage the prescriptions which have stored him alive for years. Many mornings, he tells his spouse he didn’t get them.
When she talks to him, she mentioned, he sounds weaker and extra scared day by day, not just like the upbeat man who would take her youngsters out for ice cream.
“You can hear in his voice how he feels,” she mentioned.
Now, she mentioned, he’s contemplating returning to Cuba, which he fled due to political persecution, out of concern that he’ll die in detention with out his medicines. Amador and her youngsters would go along with him, she mentioned, although she was born in New Jersey, has by no means been to Cuba, and doesn’t communicate a lot Spanish.
However he’s already collapsed twice on the Baker Correctional Establishment in Sanderson, Florida, his spouse mentioned. She’s terrified that the subsequent time, he received’t rise up.
Methodology
KFF Well being Information and The Related Press sifted by means of hundreds of immigration habeas corpus claims to seek out allegations of medical neglect from folks detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the second Trump administration.
And not using a complete, publicly accessible dataset of medical complaints by these in ICE custody, we used immigration habeas corpus claims to establish detainees’ healthcare-related allegations raised in federal courtroom. Though the meant objective of habeas corpus is to problem the legality of a petitioner’s detention — relatively than circumstances of their confinement — these filings generally embrace detainees’ claims of insufficient healthcare.
However habeas corpus filings are usually not at all times publicly accessible. Federal guidelines limit how members of the general public can entry habeas petitions filed by folks in immigration detention. For many of those circumstances, courtroom web sites publish solely courtroom orders and dockets describing different filings. The preliminary petitions can be found solely by means of in-person visits to federal courthouses throughout the nation. Habeas Dockets, a challenge of the nonprofit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative, coordinates a nationwide community of volunteers to assemble these petitions and make them accessible on-line.
KFF Well being Information and AP analyzed the dockets of roughly 33,000 circumstances filed by detainees from Jan. 20, 2025, by means of March 2026. The overwhelming majority of circumstances had solely fundamental procedural data, like dates of courtroom filings and rulings. Solely about 4,400 included the unique petitions.
We additionally gathered a couple of dozen case information from courthouses, attorneys, and the Massachusetts federal district courtroom web site, which posts most petitions beneath a singular standing order.
We ran key phrase and semantic searches of courtroom data, together with petitions, motions, and orders, for phrases and phrases doubtlessly associated to medical neglect, resembling surgical procedure, drugs, insufficient medical care, and remedy for persistent circumstances resembling diabetes and hypertension.
We discovered about 500 circumstances doubtlessly alleging medical neglect. At the least two reporters reviewed every case manually, yielding greater than 300 circumstances containing particular allegations in sworn filings of delayed, denied, or poor healthcare.
To be conservative, we excluded dozens of circumstances that alleged insufficient medical care however lacked specifics, for instance a petitioner writing, “I have been sick and don’t get proper treatment,” or a decide noting a petitioner “complains that ICE is ignoring his medical problems.” We additionally excluded circumstances by which petitioners claimed solely that they had been denied particular diets, train, or different lodging that they mentioned had been key to managing their well being circumstances, resembling a petitioner writing, “I suffer from Parkinson’s and cannot properly exercise,” or claiming that the meals supplied was unfit for an individual with diabetes.
The circumstances we analyzed had been neither randomly chosen nor consultant of immigration habeas filings nationwide. The claims weren’t independently verified. Many filings are usually not publicly accessible, and never all detainees increase medical issues in courtroom, so our account of circumstances represents a restricted window into the panorama of claims, relatively than a complete image.
Related Press journalists Garance Burke, Valerie Gonzalez, and Tim Sullivan in addition to KFF Well being Information correspondent Kate Wells contributed to this report.
This report is a collaboration between The Related Press and KFF Well being Information.
