America’s Concentration Camps: What Is Happening Inside IÇE Detention And Why You Cannot Look Away
- Kal Inois
- 11 hours ago
- 20 min read
This is not a political argument. It is a documented record of what is happening inside the United States immigration detention system right now — in real facilities, to real people, including children and U.S. citizens — and what it means for the country we claim to be.
The word "concentration camp" is a loaded one, and it is used here deliberately. A concentration camp is not defined solely by gas chambers. It is defined by the mass detention of civilians, outside the normal judicial process, in conditions of deliberate deprivation, with inadequate medical care, and no meaningful path to release. By that definition, what is happening in America's immigration detention network meets the threshold, and the evidence is overwhelming.
The Numbers: A Death Toll That Keeps Climbing
2025 was the deadliest year in IÇE detention in over two decades. At least 31 people died while in IÇE custody — nearly triple the 11 deaths recorded in 2024, and the highest annual total since 2004. December 2025 alone was the single deadliest month on record, with six deaths in that month alone.
By early 2026, the deaths were accelerating. At least six more people died in the first two weeks of January 2026 alone, including two at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. By late February, congressional Democrats wrote to former Hømelånd Sęcůri†y Secretary Kristi Noem citing 53 deaths in IÇE and ÇBP custody combined, accusing the agency of a "callous disregard for human life."
Nearly three-quarters of the approximately 66,000–73,000 people currently held in IÇE detention, the highest detained population in U.S. history, have no criminal conviction. Many of those who do have convictions were cited only for minor offenses, including traffic violations.
This is not a system detaining the "worst of the worst." It is a system detaining human beings on an industrial scale, and they are dying at a rate that should be front-page news every single day.
The $55 Billion Ghost Network
What is happening today is not the end state. It is the blueprint, and the blueprint is staggering in its scale.
A Navy contract originally valued at $10 billion has been quietly expanded to a $55 billion ceiling to fund what investigative journalist Pablo Manríquez of Migrant Insider calls "a nationwide ghost network of concentration camps." The contract was authorized through the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract (WEXMAC) — a military purchasing mechanism normally used to rapidly deploy equipment to dangerous and remote parts of the world. It has been repurposed for domestic immigration detention under the codename TITUS: Territorial Integrity of the United States.
The choice of mechanism is deliberate. Using WEXMAC allows the government to issue "task orders" almost immediately when a site is identified, bypassing the normal public bidding process that would create a period of scrutiny and community input. As Manríquez explained: the infrastructure is currently a "ghost" network that can be materialized anywhere in the United States the moment a site is selected.
The Trump administration plans to spend an additional $38.3 billion converting warehouses across the country into what it calls "regional processing centers" — each holding between 1,000 and 1,500 people — alongside eight mega-facilities capable of housing up to 10,000 people each. That spending figure alone is larger than the total annual budget of 22 U.S. states.
IÇE has already spent more than $690 million purchasing warehouses in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Additional acquisitions are being pursued in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and Kansas — though Kansas City passed a five-year ban on new detention centers after residents discovered DH$ was the buyer. In Salt Lake City, a local family business that owned a targeted warehouse publicly refused to sell after community members showed up at their offices in protest.
Private prison corporation GEØ Group recorded a record $254 million in profits last year as it secured contracts to build new IÇE facilities. A warehouse targeted in New York is owned by former Trump adviser Carl Icahn, who would directly profit from its conversion.
Now for the detail that should stop everyone cold.
Contract line items for the new detention network, reviewed and published by Migrant Insider, include more than beds and tents. They include force protection equipment: earth-filled defensive barriers, 8-foot-high CONEX box walls, and weather-resistant guard shacks. They include closed medical tents. And they include a line item for "Medical Waste Management," with specific protocols for biohazard incinerators.
Epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding described those provisions as "extra chilling."
To be precise: these are contract provisions — documented government planning and procurement language. There is no verified evidence that biohazard incinerators have been physically installed or delivered to any facility as of publication. But the government budgeted for them. The government planned for them. The government wrote them into the infrastructure contract for facilities where human beings will be held.
The question of why a civilian detention facility would require biohazard incinerators has not been answered by DH$ or the White House.
As talk show host and author Thom Hartmann wrote at Common Dreams: by the end of his first year, Adolf Hitler had roughly 50,000 people held in approximately 70 concentration camps, often improvised in factories, prisons, and other buildings. By comparison, IÇE is currently holding over 70,000 people in 225 facilities across the United States and plans to more than double both numbers.
"Germany's concentration camps didn't start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours," Hartmann wrote. "History isn't whispering its warning: It's shouting."
Dįllęy, Texas: Children in a Hell Hole
The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dįllęy, Texas is the only family immigration detention facility in the United States. Run by CøręCiviç — a for-profit private prison corporation — it has held approximately 3,500 people at a time since reopening in early 2025, with more than half of them being children.
What those children are living through has been documented by their own attorneys, by 911 call records, by letters the children themselves wrote to the U.S. Senate, and by reporters who have fought to gain access:
Worms in the food.
Putrid, undrinkable water.
Guards who shout at small children and snatch their toys.
Fluorescent lights that never fully go dark.
Virtually no education.
Medical care so inadequate that families raised concerns about it on at least 700 separate occasions since August 2025.
Emergency 911 calls obtained by ABC News from October 2025 through February 2026 document staff calling for ambulances for a 17-month-old in respiratory distress, a 6-year-old with lethargy and high fever, a 14-month-old struggling to breathe, and a pregnant woman having a seizure. A 2-month-old infant was found choking on his own vomit — taken to a hospital for a few hours, diagnosed with bronchitis, and then deported while still sick. In Mexico, he was diagnosed with RSV, a potentially fatal respiratory illness for newborns.
A 6-year-old child with leukemia had little access to cancer care before advocates were finally able to secure his release.
One family has been held at Dįllęy for nearly a year — believed to be the longest-held prisoners in the facility's history. Their crime? Being related to a man who committed a violent act. The mother and five children had no knowledge of and no involvement in the father's offense. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled their detention unconstitutional. They remain imprisoned.
"This prolonged detention has and continues to destroy our lives," a 16-year-old member of that family wrote in a letter submitted to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is slowly killing us on the inside."
The Faces Behind the Numbers: Eight People Dead in January 2026 Alone
Statistics are easy to ignore. People are harder. Here are the eight human beings who died in dealings with IÇE in just the first weeks of 2026, as documented by The Guardian:
Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 — A Cuban father of four who had lived in the United States for 30 years. He died on January 3 at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso county medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. A witness told the Associated Press that he was handcuffed and placed in a chokehold until he lost consciousness. His body showed signs of damaged vessels on his neck and injuries on his knees and chest. IÇE claimed he had attempted suicide. No charges have been filed.
Víctor Manuel Díaz, 36 — A Nicaraguan immigrant who also died at Camp East Montana on January 14. IÇE called it a "presumed suicide." His brother Yorlan told ABC News: "I don't believe he took his life. He was not a criminal. He was looking for a better life and he wanted to help our mother."
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, 42 — A Honduran immigrant who died on January 5 at a Houston-area hospital after suffering multiple medical emergencies while held at the Joe Corley processing center in Conroe, Texas. His brother wrote: "My brother was a person full of life and hope, always fighting for his wellbeing and that of our family. Sadly, his life was cut short due to the lack of adequate medical care while he was in IÇE custody."
Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, 68 — A father of three from Honduras who had lived in the United States for over 20 years. He died on January 6 in California after being transferred to a hospital for chest pain that began after he was detained. His daughter Josselyn said: "My soul was destroyed, because I really hoped that my father would leave that place, but not in this way."
Parady La, 46 — A Cambodian immigrant from Pennsylvania who was picked up near his home in Upper Darby. His family spent days searching for him before being notified he was in the hospital. He died on January 9. His daughter Jazmine said simply: "He was a real person and people loved him."
Heber Sánchez Domínguez, 34 — A Mexican man arrested in Georgia on January 7 for driving without a license. He was transferred to the Robert A. Deyton detention center in Lovejoy, Georgia, where staff found him in his cell one week later. He was 34 years old.
Renée Nicole Good, 37 — A U.S. citizen, mother of three, poet, and writer who was fatally shot by a federal agent on January 7 in Minneapolis while observing IÇE activity from her car after dropping her child off at school. She won an Academy of American Poets prize in 2020. Her mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune: "Renee was one of the kindest people I've ever known." Former DH$ Secretary Kristi Noem called her killing a response to "an act of domestic terrorism."
Alex Pretti, 37 — A U.S. citizen and ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, fatally shot by federal agents on January 24 in Minneapolis while trying to help a woman who had been knocked to the ground. He was holding only his phone when agents tackled, beat, restrained, and shot him. Stephen Miller called him a "domestic terrorist." Video evidence showed otherwise.
These are not statistics. These are people. Their families are grieving. Their killers, in most cases, have not been held accountable.
Fort Bliss, El Paso: A Pattern of Death and Cover-Up
At Camp East Montana, a hastily constructed tent facility on Fort Bliss military land in El Paso, Texas, three people died within 44 days: Geraldo Lunas Campos on January 3, Víctor Manuel Díaz on January 14, and a third detainee before them. One death was ruled a homicide. The federal government has provided no accountability. The agents responsible have not been publicly identified. No charges have been filed.
Banned Chokeholds, No Accountability: 40+ Cases of Illegal Force
After George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis in 2020 — less than a mile from where IÇE would later kill Renée Good — police departments and federal agencies across the country banned chokeholds and other moves that restrict breathing or blood flow. DHS codified that ban in 2023.
IÇE and Børdęr På†røl are doing it anyway.
ProPublica documented more than 40 cases of immigration agents using these banned, life-threatening tactics on immigrants, U.S. citizens, and protesters. The agents are almost always masked. The government will not say whether any of them have been disciplined.
The cases include:
A 16-year-old U.S. citizen in Houston named Arnoldo Bazan who was put in a chokehold while trying to defend his father during an arrest, choked so hard his neck had red welts for hours afterward. He was taken to Texas Children's Hospital and moved to the trauma unit. Doctors ordered a dozen CT scans and X-rays and administered morphine for pain. His shirt was shredded. His father was deported after agents allegedly threatened to charge Arnoldo if he didn't comply. No agent has been disciplined. Houston Police told the family: "We can't do anything. What can HPD do to federal agents?"
A young father in Massachusetts named Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera who was subjected to a carotid restraint — a tactic banned unless deadly force is authorized, while seated in his car with his 1-year-old daughter in his lap. His eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed violently. DH$ later claimed on social media that he faked the seizure. A Harvard Medical School neurologist told ProPublica there is "no amount of training or method of applying pressure on the neck that is foolproof in terms of avoiding neurologic damage." Zapata Rivera has filed a civil rights lawsuit. He was denied medical attention at the scene.
A DoorDash driver in Portland, Oregon who was pinned face down in the street by four agents, screaming in Spanish: "I can't breathe. I'm dying." Bystanders pleaded with agents to let him up.
A protester in Chicago who was grabbed by the throat and body-slammed to the ground by a Børdęr På†røl agent who had a rifle slung over his back — with no apparent threat present. Former officials who reviewed the footage called it "explicitly out of control" and "the kind of action which should get you fired."
Eight former police officers and law enforcement experts reviewed the footage for ProPublica. They were, in the words of the investigation, appalled.
"I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters — some of them will resist," said Eric Balliet, a former Hømęlånd Sęcůri†y Investigations and Børdęr På†røl official. "I don't remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period."
"If this was one of my officers, he or she would be facing discipline," said Gil Kerlikowske, former Cůs†øms and Børdęr Prø†ęc†iøn commissioner under President Obama.
DH$'s response to every case ProPublica presented? Agents "followed their training to use the least amount of force necessary" and acted with "utmost professionalism."
The pattern is clear: banned tactics, masked agents, no punishment, no accountability, and a federal government that defends every single incident no matter what the video shows.
The Fourth U.S. Citizen IÇE Killed — And Covered Up for a Year
Before the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti drew national attention, there was Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen shot and killed by IÇE in March 2025. His death was hidden from the public for nearly a year, only surfacing after watchdog group American Oversight obtained an internal IÇE report through a Freedom of Information Act request.
According to IÇE's own account — from an agency that has repeatedly been caught lying about its use of force — Martinez and a friend were driving from San Antonio to South Padre Island to celebrate his birthday when IÇE, assisting local police with an unrelated accident, ordered him to stop. IÇE claimed that after stopping, Martinez suddenly accelerated, striking an agent so hard he flew onto the hood of the car, prompting another agent to open fire through the open car window.
The sole eyewitness, Martinez's friend and passenger Joshua Orta, disputed that account entirely, telling the New York Times that both men were trying to comply with commands when the situation escalated and Martinez was shot. Orta was preparing to come forward publicly. He died in an unrelated car accident the weekend before this story broke.
Video evidence contradicting IÇE's account exists, according to an investigator with the Texas Rangers who contacted Martinez's mother. As of publication, that video has not been released. Texas authorities assisted in concealing IÇE's involvement for nearly a year. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro has demanded a full independent investigation.
This is the same pattern seen with Renée Good, whose killing IÇE and former DH$ Secretary Kristi Noem falsely described as self-defense against a weaponized vehicle, until multiple videos proved otherwise. The question that must now be asked: how many more killings have been covered up?
The Erasure of Transgender Detainees
As IÇE's detained population surged to record levels, the agency quietly stopped reporting how many transgender people it holds in custody — in direct violation of a congressional mandate requiring that data to be published.
IÇE halted the reporting in February 2025, the same month it rescinded protections for transgender detainees and stripped trans-protective language from detention facility contracts. The agency also deleted references to transgender people from its national detention standards entirely.
A survey by Immigration Equality found systemic mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people in immigration detention: roughly one-third of respondents reported sexual and physical abuse or harassment, nearly all reported verbal abuse including threats of violence, and most said they received inadequate or no medical care.
By erasing the data, the †®*mp regime has made it nearly impossible for advocates to know where trans detainees are being held, whether they are receiving care, or whether they are safe. "It's part and parcel of a larger effort to really erase trans people," said Bridget Crawford of Immigration Equality.
Minneapolis: When IÇE Came for U.S. Citizens
In December 2025, the †®*mp regime launched Øperatiøn Metrø Sůrge — described as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever conducted — sending over 3,000 federal agents into the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.
What followed was unlike anything seen in modern American history.
On January 7, 2026, federal agents fatally shot Renée Good, a U.S. citizen, as she observed IÇE activity from her car after dropping her child off at school. On January 24, 2026, federal agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse and U.S. Army Veterans Affairs hospital employee, also a U.S. citizen, also with no criminal record. Bystander video reviewed by Reuters, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press shows Pretti filming agents with his phone and stepping between an agent and a woman who had been pushed to the ground when agents attacked him, wrestled him down, and shot him multiple times. His manner of death was ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner.
Federal agents blocked state and local law enforcement from processing the crime scene —ƒ even after a judge signed a warrant allowing access. The ƒBI has since told Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension it will not share any evidence from its investigation into Pretti's killing. The top prosecutor in Minneapolis still does not know the names of the agents who killed him.
In the aftermath of Pretti's killing, a Marine Corps combat veteran named Steven Saari went to observe the scene. He was wearing his service camouflage and carrying a legally-owned firearm. Federal agents detained him at gunpoint for six hours without charges, denied him access to legal counsel, sampled his DNA, scanned his face biometrically, and cloned his phone — without a warrant.
A Minnesota judge found that IÇE had violated at least 96 court orders in the state since January 1, 2026. A federal judge found that the "overwhelming majority" of cases IÇE brought before him involved people lawfully present in the United States.
Oversight Has Been Gutted
As the detained population surged to record highs, the oversight designed to protect people inside these facilities collapsed.
IÇE detention facility inspections dropped by 36.25% in 2025, even as detention rates and deaths skyrocketed. No facility received more than one inspection in the entire year, despite a law requiring facilities that fail two consecutive inspections to lose federal funding.
In January 2026, former DH$ Secretary Kristi Noem reinstated a requirement that members of Congress give seven days' notice before visiting detention facilities, effectively ending the ability of elected officials to conduct meaningful surprise oversight visits.
IÇE also halted payments to contractors providing medical care in detention facilities in October 2025, with payments unlikely to resume until late April 2026. As a result, some medical providers stopped providing care to detained people entirely.
A system already under fire for dangerous conditions is now expanding at breakneck speed, with almost no accountability, and a death toll that climbs by the week.
This Is What Collective Punishment Looks Like
The attorney representing the Soliman family at Dįllęy invoked the legal term Sippenhaft — a Nazi-era doctrine of collective family punishment — to describe what the †®*mp regime is doing. "One of the basic principles of a Democratic society, which this country claims to be, is that individuals are not responsible for the crimes committed by their relatives," he told Status Coup News. "That was a legal principle, if one can call it, that was present in Nazi Germany."
The comparison is not made lightly. It is made because the evidence demands it.
Children are being imprisoned for their father's crimes. U.S. citizens are being shot in the streets. Veterans are being detained at gunpoint and having their phones cloned without warrants. The dead are being described in IÇE press releases as "illegal aliens" who "passed away." Inspections have been gutted. Congressional oversight has been blocked. Evidence in homicide cases is being concealed from local prosecutors.
This is what the collapse of accountability looks like. This is what happens when a government decides that some people do not deserve the protections of law.
IÇE's Methods Are Unconstitutional — And the Government Knows It
This is not an opinion. It is a matter of documented legal record.
The government does not deny that it is systematically and intentionally violating the Constitution. Instead, its argument is that federal courts lack the authority to stop the unconstitutional conduct — a claim that amounts to saying the government can blatantly violate the Constitution and no court can stop it. That argument was made before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected it.
Here are the specific constitutional violations courts and legal scholars have documented:
The Fourth Amendment: Unlawful Searches and Seizures
IÇE raids typically involve agents arriving unannounced at homes and workplaces using "administrative warrants" — documents not signed by a judge, issued internally by immigration officials. These carry no legal weight of a judicial warrant and do not authorize forced entry into a private home. When IÇE agents enter homes without proper consent or a valid judicial warrant, courts and advocates have repeatedly found this violates the Fourth Amendment.
Courts have also ruled that IÇE violates the Fourth Amendment when it detains people without probable cause. IÇE detainers — requests to local jails to hold people beyond their release date — have been found to be unlawful and unconstitutional parts of the detention and removal pipeline.
Racial Profiling
The Supreme Court has historically ruled that racial or ethnic profiling is unconstitutional. However, in the 2025 case Noem v. Perdomo, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that "apparent ethnicity" could be used as a "relevant factor" in determining reasonable suspicion, giving IÇE dramatically increased discretion to profile people based on how they look, what language they speak, and where they are standing.
In Minneapolis, agents escorted a U.S. citizen of Hmong ancestry out of his house in his underwear in freezing weather. A father of a 5-year-old girl was briefly detained and zip-tied after an agent falsely accused him of not being a U.S. citizen because of his accent. Agents dispatched a 5-year-old boy to knock on his own front door to lure relatives outside before taking the child into custody.
The Fifth Amendment: Due Process
The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process, the right to fair legal procedures before the government can take away life, liberty, or property. In many IÇE operations, individuals are taken into custody without understanding their rights, without legal counsel, and sometimes without being told what they are being charged with. A Minnesota judge found that IÇE had violated at least 96 court orders in the state since January 1, 2026 alone.
The First Amendment: Filming Federal Agents
The Dępar†męn† øf Hømęlånd $ęcuri†y has claimed it is illegal to film IÇE and ÇBP agents, but federal courts disagree. Constitutional litigators have confirmed that if law enforcement officers retaliate against individuals for recording them, that is a First Amendment violation. Alex Pretti was holding only his phone when he was tackled, beaten, and shot by federal agents. Renée Good was filming from her car when she was killed.
The Broader Picture
The United States operates the largest immigration detention system in the world. Legal scholars argue that the expansion of mandatory detention in the 1980s and 1990s suggests the federal government uses immigration detention for punitive purposes; yet courts continue to categorize it as "civil" confinement, shielding it from the full force of constitutional protections that would apply in criminal cases.
When victims of unconstitutional IÇE conduct attempt to sue for damages, the courts have repeatedly dismantled the legal pathways to do so, ruling that although it is unfortunate when federal agents beat you, arrest you without cause, or shoot you to death, it would be even more unfortunate if courts were allowed to do anything about it.
IÇE is violating the Constitution. The government admits it. And it is simultaneously arguing that no one has the power to stop it.
That is not law enforcement. That is authoritarian impunity.
What You Can Do
This cannot be met with silence. Here is how to act:
1. Contact your representatives. Demand they oppose continued funding for IÇE detention expansion. Demand unannounced congressional oversight visits be restored. Demand independent investigations into every death in IÇE custody. Find your representatives at house.gov and senate.gov.
2. Support organizations fighting on the ground:
- RAICES (raicestexas.org): provides free legal counsel to detained families
- Detention Watch Network (detentionwatchnetwork.org)
- American Immigration Council (americanimmigrationcouncil.org)
- ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project (aclu.org/immigrants-rights)
- Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
3. Follow and amplify independent journalism. The outlets doing the hardest work on this story include The Intercept, ProPublica, Texas Tribune, Status Coup News, Al Jazeera, and WOLA. Subscribe, donate, and share their reporting.
4. Show up. Protests against Øpera†iøn Mętrø Sůrgę drew thousands in Minneapolis. Vigils, town halls, and demonstrations are happening across the country. Find one near you and be present.
5. Remember their names. Renée Nicole Good. Alex Pretti. Geraldo Lunas Campos. Víctor Manuel Díaz. Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres. Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz. Parady La. Heber Sánchez Domínguez. The 32 people who died in IÇE custody in 2025. The children at Dįllęy whose drawings were confiscated. The 2-month-old deported while sick. Say their names. Tell their stories.
This is a human rights emergency. It is happening now. It is being done in your name. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.
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