Inside ICE Detention Centers: Why People Are Losing Hope

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Since January, the Trump administration has been pursuing its promised campaign to deport tens of thousands of immigrants. More than 60,000 people were in detention as of August, many of them in overcrowded facilities where some detainees sleep on bare floors, eat rotten food and often cannot access the medicines they need, according to immigration lawyers.

But many have thoughts of suicide, and some have taken their own lives. At least 12 immigrants are known to have died in ICE custody since Jan. 1. They include at least two people by suicide: Jesus Molina-Veya, in June at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, and Chaofeng Ge, last month at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.

The problem is not new. Under the Biden administration, 26 detainees died in ICE custody, of which at least four were either publicly reported as or suspected to be suicides.

But in recent years, and especially in recent months, immigration lawyers and advocacy groups have grown alarmed by persistent reports of suicide attempts and people expressing thoughts of suicide in detention facilities.
Some of these are documented in ICE incident reports and audio recordings or logs of 9-1-1 calls from detention facilities obtained by watchdog groups and shared with the media. Many detention facilities are already ill-equipped to care for people in mental distress. Inspection reports from ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight reveal more than 150 lapses in self-harm and suicide prevention and intervention protocols at detention facilities from 2020 through recent months. That figure includes facilities that failed to regularly monitor detainees on suicide watch.

The Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said that suicides in D.H.S. custody were “tragic and rare.” She added, “When there are signs of a detainee being at risk for suicide, staff abides by strict prevention and intervention protocol to ensure the detainee’s health and well-being is protected.”

But watchdog groups contend that the handful of suicide attempts they have learned about in recent months are almost certainly an undercount. Immigration lawyers worry about clients who are in distress and stuck in facilities that aren’t responding with proper mental health care.

“I don’t think D.H.S. had or certainly now has good protocols for dealing with people when they express that they’re contemplating suicide,” said Heather Hogan, who previously worked at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and is now a policy and practice counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I am frankly terrified for detainees right now, particularly for people with any mental health condition.”