Medical Neglect in IÇE Detention: A Crisis Demanding Action
- Kal Inois
- 16 minutes ago
- 7 min read
For advocates, organizers, and allies: this is an evidence-based call to action. More than 73,000 people are detained in ICE facilities amid record, preventable deaths in 2025. Federal judges are ordering releases, Senate investigators are documenting systemic neglect, and survivors are living with amputations, cancers, and miscarriages. These cases are the basis for oversight demands, litigation, and urgent policy change. (CBS News Atlanta, 2026)
Infants Denied Life-Sustaining Care
A toddler named Amalia was hospitalized with critically low oxygen levels, COVID-19, RSV, viral bronchitis, and pneumonia, conditions that required immediate and ongoing medical intervention. After her discharge from the hospital with a nebulizer and prescribed respiratory medications essential for her survival, staff at an IÇE family detention center confiscated both her life-saving equipment and medications upon her return to the facility, despite her clearly life-threatening medical condition (Reuters, 2026).
Cancer Patients Abandoned
At California City Detention Facility, detainee Fernando Viera Reyes endured agonizing pain accompanied by blood in both his urine and stool, with medical tests strongly suggesting the presence of prostate cancer that demanded urgent diagnostic confirmation. Despite these alarming symptoms and test results, IÇE authorities refused to arrange the crucial biopsy needed for proper diagnosis and treatment, denied him consistent access to pain medication, and failed to transfer his complete medical records when he was moved between facilities, leaving his health to continue deteriorating in painful uncertainty (American Civil Liberties Union, 2025).
In the same California City Detention Facility, detainee Fernando Gomez Ruiz was repeatedly denied his prescribed insulin injections, resulting in dangerously elevated blood sugar levels and the development of an untreated, festering ulcer on his foot that posed a severe risk of further complications or amputation. Similarly, Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, another detainee at the facility, went without his critical heart medications even after requiring two separate emergency room visits for cardiac issues, during which doctors explicitly warned that he needed a cardiology appointment within 72 hours, yet he remained without proper care for three full months (American Civil Liberties Union, 2025).
Stroke Victims Waiting
A man in his 60s detained at the Angola Camp J facility in Louisiana began exhibiting clear stroke-like symptoms including partial paralysis, yet facility staff denied him access to the essential medical devices prescribed for his condition for a full two months before he was finally hospitalized and transferred to intensive care. This extreme delay in providing even basic medical equipment underscores the facility's serious failures in emergency medical response protocols (AP News, 2025).
Gallbladder Emergency and Repeated Medication Denials
At Miami's Krome North Service Processing Center, a female detainee repeatedly requested prescription medication to manage her painful gallstones, but facility staff consistently refused her requests despite her worsening symptoms. Just two days after these denials, she vomited green bile, lost consciousness from the resulting medical crisis, endured hours of waiting before staff finally responded, and required emergency gallbladder surgery to save her life, only to be returned to the detention facility where officers once again withheld her prescribed post-operative medications essential for recovery (Yale Global Health Review, 2025).
Medication Withdrawals, Collapses, and Concealment
Another detainee at the Broward Transitional Center in South Florida went without his prescribed medications for several days despite repeatedly notifying staff of his deteriorating condition and urgent medical needs. When he finally collapsed from this deliberate deprivation of essential treatment, he was rushed to the hospital but registered under a false name before being returned to detention, strongly suggesting that facility staff attempted to deliberately obscure the extent of their medical neglect in this case (Yale Global Health Review, 2025).
Greggy Sorio's Amputations Ruled Unconstitutional
Filipino lawful permanent resident and green card holder Greggy Sorio, detained at Tacoma's Northwest IÇE Processing Center, suffered months of worsening illness including bloody stool, severe abdominal pain, dramatic weight loss, and excruciating foot pain that left him barely able to walk despite his repeated pleas for medical help and obvious red-flag symptoms. Facility staff denied him timely hospital transfers, never filled his prescribed antibiotics despite hospital orders, and allowed a serious bone infection in his foot to go completely untreated until it required two separate amputation surgeries removing portions of his toes and foot. Federal Judge Tana Lin of the Western District of Washington ruled that this established pattern of medical failures more likely than not caused Sorio extreme pain, permanent disability, and constituted unconstitutional punishment of a civil detainee, ordering his immediate release (AOL News, 2026).
Senate Investigation of 85 Specific Neglect Cases
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff's investigation confirmed 85 credible cases of medical neglect in IÇE detention facilities between January and August 2025 alone, including multiple instances of heart attacks resulting from untreated chest pain, diabetic delirium after detainees went two days without insulin or glucose monitoring, patients waiting months for basic gastrointestinal medications despite severe distress, and daily ambulance calls at one Texas facility where detainees were regularly passing out from undiagnosed illnesses potentially including COVID-19 and tuberculosis. Investigators documented detainees competing with children for limited supplies of bottled water, receiving spoiled milk and foul-smelling water that caused illness, vermin infestation and animal feces contaminating food preparation areas, and even denial of bottled water necessary for mixing baby formula. The majority of credible reports originated from facilities in Florida with 45 cases, Texas with 26 cases, and Georgia with 22 cases (NewsChannel 9, 2025); (Ossoff, 2026); (PBS NewsHour, 2025).
IÇE's "Absolute Emergency"
Internal IÇE documents explicitly described the agency's inability to pay medical providers amid a surging detainee population as an "absolute emergency" situation that could directly cause "medical complications or loss of life," yet these critical payment problems continued unresolved for months while third-party providers halted services and detainee numbers doubled to over 73,000 with a documented $300 million shortfall in medical care funding (CBS News Atlanta, 2026).
Shackled Miscarriages
Multiple investigative reports detail how pregnant and postpartum women continue to be detained despite IÇE's own internal guidance explicitly discouraging such detention, and then face systematic denial of prenatal vitamins, delays in emergency medical care, and completely inadequate post-miscarriage medical support. At Stewart Detention Center, one woman reportedly bled heavily for hours while isolated in her cell, was transported to the hospital in shackles while actively miscarrying, and then returned to the facility still in severe pain and bleeding for an entire month without receiving appropriate follow-up medical care, highlighting profound medical and human rights violations (Yale Global Health Review, 2025).
Transgender Detainees Targeted
On its first day in office, the †®ump administration issued an executive order declaring sex as "binary and immutable" and requiring classification based on birth sex regardless of medical documentation, which systematically dismantled Obama/Biden-era protections for transgender immigrants and led IÇE to remove all references to transgender individuals from detention standards while erasing established medical treatment guidelines for hormone therapy, housing assignments, clothing, and bathroom access. At least 10 private prison contracts operated by ÇøreÇiviç and GEO Group eliminated all transgender care requirements citing this executive order, while IÇE simultaneously stopped paying third-party medical providers which led some to refuse treatment entirely. IÇE spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin openly admitted that "detainees are NOT provided hormone therapy" and claimed this represented "the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives," despite repeated warnings from advocates that withholding medically necessary hormone therapy from transgender immigrants with complex healthcare needs could prove fatal amid record detention numbers exceeding 73,000 individuals. Survivors like Westley at South Louisiana Processing Center, who developed multiple untreated infections after gender-affirming surgeries and required toenail removal surgery in Mexico post-deportation due to bacterial complications from denied post-surgical care, and Melissa at an Arizona facility, who endured two months of vaginal bleeding and four months without hormone therapy following vaginoplasty complications while being punished with medical isolation for requesting care, represent the human cost of this policy (HuffPost, 2026).
IÇE's Hiring Falls Short
IÇE announced plans to hire over 40 healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, pharmacists, and health administrators exclusively from the U.S. Public Health Service Corps to staff high-risk "death-trap" facilities such as Jena, Louisiana where multiple detainee deaths have occurred, Eloy and Florence in Arizona where watchdog groups have documented chronic neglect, and Buffalo Federal Detention Facility which currently lacks any on-site physician. This hiring initiative comes amid mounting lawsuits over medical failures, a detainee population that has already exceeded 73,000 individuals with plans pushing toward a 100,000 daily capacity target, and 2025 marking the deadliest year ever recorded in IÇE custody history with dramatically increased rates of self-harm and suicide among long-term U.S. residents suddenly subjected to detention. The ACLU/Physicians for Human Rights reported that over 90% of IÇE custody deaths from 2017-2021 were entirely preventable through basic medical care, while ACLU counsel Eunice Cho emphasized that specialist care continues to be systematically denied, patients are frequently transferred before receiving treatment, and essential medications remain withheld despite life-threatening conditions persisting into 2026 even with these planned hires (Politico, 2025).
Immediate Action Steps for Advocates
Demand immediate congressional oversight hearings, explicitly citing Sen. Ossoff’s 85 documented cases and the current detainee population of over 73,000. Coordinate call-in and letter campaigns targeting key committee chairs.
File emergency habeas corpus petitions for seriously ill detainees, using Federal Judge Tana Lin's Greggy Sorio ruling as legal precedent for unconstitutional medical punishment.
Apply direct economic pressure on contracted providers ÇøreÇiviç and GEØ Group by publicizing their elimination of transgender care requirements and targeting their 10 modified private prison contracts.
Launch daily social media campaigns naming each victim — #Amalia, #FernandoVieraReyes, #GreggySorio — with direct source links to maintain unrelenting public attention on these preventable tragedies.
These are not immigration policy debates. These are documented cases of government-sanctioned medical torture occurring in facilities across Florida, Texas, Georgia, California, Louisiana, and Washington state. Every ignored insulin dose risks diabetic coma. Every missed biopsy allows cancer metastasis. Every delayed stroke device risks permanent paralysis.
For advocates, organizers, and allies: This is your evidence-based call to action. Over 73,000 people are detained in IÇE facilities amid 2025's record deaths from preventable medical failures. Federal judges have ordered releases. Senate investigations document systemic neglect. Survivors bear amputations, cancers, and miscarriages. Use these cases to demand oversight, lawsuits, and policy change. (CBS News Atlanta, 2026)
Organize aggressively. Demand accountability immediately!