This Is What Racism Looks Like
- Kal Inois
- 6 minutes ago
- 16 min read
The Documented, Deadly, Ongoing Assault on Nonwhite Americans — In
Numbers, In Names, and In Their Own Words
Let us be precise. This is not a blog about immigration policy. This is not a blog about crime statistics. This is not a blog about border security or economic anxiety or any of the other euphemisms Amerikkka uses when it does not want to say the word out loud.
This is a blog about racism. American racism. Systemic, structural, lethal, and accelerating. It is happening to Black Americans, Latino Americans, Indigenous Americans, Asian Americans, and to immigrant communities of color who came to this country seeking safety and found a machine designed to disappear them.
Every claim in this blog is documented. Every number comes from a peer-reviewed study, an independent journalist, a government's own records, or an organization that has spent years in the rooms where these decisions are made. We are not editorializing. We are reading the record. The record is damning.
Part One: People Are Being Disappeared
Let us start with the word that the United Nations uses. Not 'detained.' Not 'removed.' Not 'processed.' The word is disappeared. And it is the accurate word.
Human Rights First documented that beginning in March 2025, the †rump Regime began transferring
migrants from U.S. detention centers to CECOT — the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, a
prison notorious for torture — without notifying relatives, allowing contact with attorneys, or permitting any legal challenge. They simply vanished from the IÇE detainee locator system. Their families searched and found nothing.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 relatives of people deported to El Salvador. None had been allowed to communicate with their families. None had been brought before a judge. In three cases, families still have no idea where their loved ones are.
At 'Alligator Alcatraz,' the makeshift detention jail in the Florida Everglades, the Miami Herald found that of approximately 1,800 immigrants held there in July 2025, around 800 had no records at all in the IÇE database. Another 450 were listed only as 'Call IÇE for details.' The whereabouts of nearly 1,200 men, two-thirds of the facility's population, could not be determined. One detainee spent nine days bouncing through five different facilities, appearing in the locator briefly — hours at a time — before disappearing again. The only way his family knew he was alive was when fellow detainees lent him phone minutes to make two calls.
The American Friends Service Committee tracked six cases in which families took an average of three to
five days to locate a detained loved one after their arrest. In all six cases, families received no official notice from any federal agency. Staff had to make between seven and 25 calls per case to confirm a person was alive. In four cases, IÇE agents actively misreported, denied, or withheld the person's location.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination formally warned the United States that IÇE and ÇBP are systematically using racial profiling and arbitrary identity checks against people of
Hispanic/Latino, African, and Asian origin, resulting in widespread arrests of people who have every legal right to be here. The committee condemned racist language from political leaders, including the president himself, as inciting discrimination and hate crimes.
The United States Disappeared Tracker, an independent citizen-built database, is attempting to document what the government will not. You can track the data yourself. The numbers grow every week.
Part Two: People Are Dying in Custody — and the Deaths Are Being Hidden
According to KFF's analysis of IÇE's own detainee death reporting, 46 people died in IÇE custody between January 2025 and March 18, 2026. That is what IÇE admits to. The real number is higher. The Regime knows it. And the concealment is deliberate.
Here is how the undercounting works: IÇE regularly releases people from custody shortly before they die, so the death never appears in official reports. The ACLU sued IÇE in 2021 specifically over this practice — people released while hospitalized and in a coma, a transgender asylum seeker given parole documents to sign in her hospital bed before dying four days later, men 'released' from IÇE while on ventilators. None counted. Under the second †rump term, IÇE also stopped using standardized death report titles, switching to narrative press releases using language like 'illegal alien passes away,' making systematic tracking harder and burying each death in propaganda framing.
IÇE's own death tracker had not been updated since September 22, 2025 when seven people died in
December 2025 alone. When a journalist filed a FOIA request demanding data behind IÇE's claim that
deaths represented 'the lowest rate in agency history,' IÇE did not respond. The Intercept documented that staff at a GEØ Group facility serially falsified detention records surrounding a detainee's death, and IÇE responded by giving GEØ $4 million more in federal funding.
The numbers we do know: 2025 was the deadliest year for IÇE detainees in over two decades — 33
confirmed deaths. Fiscal Year 2026 surpassed that total in just six months. December 2025 was the single deadliest month on record. Seven people died that month alone. Four of them died within a four-day span.
The ACLU found that 95% of IÇE detention deaths between 2017 and 2021 were preventable with adequate medical care. The pattern has not changed. It has accelerated.
Between January 20, 2025 and January 12, 2026, Senator Jon Ossoff's staff documented 1,037 credible
reports of human rights abuses against people held in IÇE, DH$, HH$, and Bureau of Prisons facilities
across 28 states and Puerto Rico. Those reports included 26 credible accounts of mistreatment of pregnant women, 40 of mistreatment of children, 88 of physical and sexual abuse, and 139 of denial of adequate food or water.
What follows are seven cases — documented from IÇE's own death reports, autopsies, eyewitness
accounts, and independent journalism. These seven people died in a roughly ten-week window between
December 2025 and January 2026. They are not exceptions. They are the pattern.
CASE 1: Pete Sumalo Montejo, 72 — Philippines — Died December 5, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Convicted child sex offender from Philippines passes away at Harlingen hospital'
Pete Sumalo Montejo had been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1962, over six decades. He was 72 years old when IÇE arrested him in February 2025 and placed him in the Montgomery Processing Center in Texas. From the moment he entered custody, his health collapsed. His own death report documents hospitalization after hospitalization: admitted in May for shortness of breath and hypoxia, discharged back to detention; hospitalized repeatedly between July and November for anemia and septic shock from pneumonia, discharged back to detention; admitted again in December. He died of cardiac arrest on December 5, 2025. A 72-year-old man, six decades in this country, hospitalized over and over and returned to a detention cell each time.
CASE 2: Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, 48 — Pakistan — Died December 6, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Criminal illegal alien from Pakistan passes away of suspected natural causes at Fort Worth hospital'
His own death report from IÇE's records documents what actually happened inside the Prairieland Detention Center: respiratory failure, blood clots he was coughing up in pieces described as 'ball-sized,' end-stage renal disease, diastolic heart failure, loss of consciousness, internal bleeding, abdominal ulcer with bleeding, and extremely low hemoglobin levels. He was hospitalized multiple times between June and November 2025 — and discharged back to detention each time. On November 28, he was transferred to the hospital for low oxygen levels and tachycardia. He died December 6.
IÇE called it 'suspected natural causes.' The death report calls it months of cascading organ failure in a detention cell.
CASE 3: Jean Wilson Brutus, 41 — Haiti — Died December 12, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Criminal illegal alien passes away at University Hospital following medical emergency at Delaney Hall Detention Facility'
Jean Wilson Brutus entered IÇE custody on December 11, 2025. A registered nurse completed his intake screening: normal vital signs, no medical history of cardiovascular issues. He was dead less than 24 hours later — less than five hours after arriving at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark. The cause of death remains officially unknown even after IÇE's full death report was released. A family member says a nurse told them he 'fell down a flight of stairs,' a detail that appears nowhere in IÇE's official account. His cousin: 'We as a family are seeking justice and transparency of what went down, what transpired for him to enter their custody in perfect health and end up dead.' An activist holding
vigil outside Delaney Hall said she watched an ambulance pull onto the property the night of his death — and watched it get held up leaving by a van dropping off new detainees. She did not learn he had died until IÇE issued a press release a week later.
CASE 4: Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, 46 — Eritrea — Died December 14, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Illegal alien from Eritrea passes away at Moshannon Valley Processing Center'
Sheikh Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir was the beloved imam of the Islamic Center of Northeast Ohio in Cleveland — a father of four, a community pillar, a man his congregation described as 'a gentle guide who illuminated our paths.' He was a lawful permanent resident. After serving a prison sentence for wire fraud, he was transferred directly to IÇE detention instead of being returned to his community — and held there for 215 days awaiting an immigration hearing that never came. His own IÇE death report shows he had an abnormal EKG reading in early December after reporting chest pain, numbness, and tingling, and then declined admission to the medical housing unit for monitoring. The report does not
explain why, after an abnormal EKG, he was not transferred to an emergency room. Advocates say he did not receive CPR until he reached the hospital. He died at 3:21 a.m. on December 14. It was the third death at Moshannon in three years, a facility owned by GEØ Group, which continued to receive millions in federal funding after each death.
CASE 5: Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, 39 — Nicaragua — Died December 14, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Illegal alien from Nicaragua passes away at a hospital in Natchez'
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez was scheduled to be removed to Nicaragua on December 13, 2025. On December 4, staff at the Adams County Correctional Center — run by ÇøreÇiviç, one of the largest private prison companies in the country — responded to an emergency medical call. He had no pulse. Life-saving measures were performed. He was transferred to Merit Health Natchez. He failed a brain function test. His family requested he be removed from the ventilator. He died on December 14, one day after his scheduled deportation. At the time of his death, IÇE had not updated its own detainee death tracker since September 22, 2025, nearly three months. Roughly nine in ten detainees at Adams County had not been charged with any crime. December 2025 saw seven deaths in ICE custody. Rodriguez was one of them.
CASE 6: Nenko Stanev Gantchev, 56 — Bulgaria — Died December 15, 2025
IÇE's press release title: 'Illegal alien from Bulgaria passes away at North Lake Processing Center, natural causes suspected'
Nenko Gantchev had lived in Chicago for 30 years. He paid taxes. He owned a business. He was arrested in September 2025 during an IÇE enforcement blitz and transferred to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, a GEØ Group private prison. He had a pending bond appeal: a federal judge had ordered his release on bond, but the Seventh Circuit blocked it. His own death report documents known hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, and cardiac abnormalities at intake. Other detainees reported he asked for medical assistance and did not receive it in time. He was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell during a routine check on December 15, 2025. His wife told reporters: 'He's paid taxes this whole time, he's not a criminal. Why do they treat him like this?' His death was the fourth in a four-day period — December 12 to 15. Congressional representatives demanded an investigation. IÇE declined to answer their questions.
CASE 7: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, 68 — Honduras — Died January 6, 2026
IÇE's press release title: 'Illegal alien in IÇE custody passes away at California hospital'
Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz was 68 years old. IÇE's own death report tells this story: He arrived at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California with only mildly elevated blood pressure noted. Over the following weeks, he repeatedly sought medical attention for persistent heartburn, cough, and stomach pain. Each time, nurses gave him antacids and dietary advice. Despite recurring complaints, no referral to a higher-level provider was made. On January 4, he presented with acute chest pain. A registered nurse administered medication and told him to return if it got worse.
That evening his condition deteriorated rapidly: nausea, vomiting, abnormal EKG, low blood pressure. He was finally transferred to a hospital and diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a heart attack. He suffered five cardiac arrests. He died January 6, 2026. His daughter Josselyn told reporters that his heart problems began after he was detained. He was 68 years old. He complained about chest pain for weeks. They gave him antacids.
SPECIAL CASE: Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 — Cuba — Died January 3, 2026 — RULED HOMICIDE
IÇE's initial press release title: 'IÇE reports aggravated felon and convicted child sex offender's death at Camp East Montana in Texas'
IÇE's initial statement said Geraldo Lunas Campos died after experiencing 'medical distress' in segregation. Guards, IÇE said, 'observed him in distress' and 'initiated lifesaving measures.' A witness told the Associated Press what actually happened: at least five guards held Lunas Campos down while handcuffed. One guard put an arm around his neck and squeezed until he was unconscious. He said 'I can't breathe.' He did not regain consciousness.
The El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled: Cause of death — asphyxia due to neck and torso compression. Manner of death — HOMICIDE.
IÇE's own death report confirms the facility knew at intake that Lunas Campos had a complex mental health history: bipolar disorder, anxiety, a history of suicide attempts, and long-term psychotropic medication use. He was placed in segregation anyway. He was one of three people to die at Camp East Montana, the largest IÇE detention facility in the country, built on the same Fort Bliss military base formerly used to intern Japanese Americans during World War II, in a 44-day span. The two detainee witnesses who spoke to the Washington Post about what they saw were given deportation notices days later. A federal judge had to block their removal to prevent them from testifying.
Seven cases. Ten weeks. Seven countries. Seven facilities. Seven press release
titles designed to tell you who these people were not, rather than who they were.
And behind each title: a person. A father. A husband. An imam. A grandmother's
son. A man who had lived here for sixty years.
33 confirmed deaths in 2025. 26 more in just the first six months of FY2026. At least 46 since †rump took
office in January 2025, and that is the floor, not the ceiling. The real number is unknown. It is deliberately made unknowable. That is not an accident. That is a policy.
Part Three: Facing Deportation Alone — The Due Process Lie
The Vera Institute of Justice's Immigration Court Legal Representation Dashboard, updated monthly from government data, shows what American due process actually looks like for immigrants:
As of July 2025, there were 3.4 million pending deportation cases in U.S. immigration courts. In 59% of
those cases, nearly 2 million people, the person facing deportation had no lawyer. Among detained
people facing deportation, 44% had no attorney. Of the more than 450,000 people ordered removed in the past 12 months, 75% lacked legal representation. More than 900,000 children were facing deportation, and over 66% of those children had no attorney.
Here is what legal representation actually means: among people facing deportation for having entered
without inspection who had a lawyer, 59% were permitted to remain in the United States. And among people in immigration court who had a lawyer, 97% appeared for their court hearings, annihilating the narrative that immigrants skip court. The federal government provides lawyers in criminal court. It does not here. That is a choice. It is not an accident.
Part Four: The Supreme Court Just Green-Lit Racial Profiling
In September 2025, the Supreme Court, 6 to 3, granted an emergency request from the †rump Regime allowing IÇE 'roving patrols' to stop people based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do, and where they happen to be. Both a federal district court and the 9th Circuit had ruled this was illegal racial profiling. The Supreme Court reversed both rulings in a brief, unsigned order.
Translation: if you look Latino, if you speak Spanish, if you are doing work that looks like immigrant labor, federal agents can now stop you anywhere and demand you prove your right to exist in Amerikkka. U.S. citizens included.
Part Five: The Criminal Justice System Is a Racial Caste System
Black Americans make up 13% of the United States population. They make up 37% of the prison and jail
population. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 48% of people serving life or 'virtual life' sentences are Black. The incarceration rate for Native Americans is 763 per 100,000, more than twice the national rate of 350. These disparities are not explained by crime rates. They are explained by racism at every stage of the system: who gets stopped, who gets charged, who gets bail, who gets convicted, who gets the longer sentence.
Fair and Just Prosecution reported in November 2025 that Black Americans are more likely to face arrest
and incarceration for drug-related conduct than their white counterparts, despite similar usage rates.
Research published in the American Journal of Public Health documents six direct pathways through which racial profiling harms Black physical health, including PTSD, cardiovascular disease, and lower birth weight in infants born to mothers who experienced or witnessed police violence. Racism is a public health crisis. The studies say so explicitly.
Part Six: The Racial Wealth and Health Gap Is Growing
KFF's comprehensive report on health and health care by race and ethnicity documents that at least half of Indigenous (58%), Black (54%), and Hispanic (50%) adults experienced at least one type of discrimination in daily life in the past year. A February 2026 NYC Department of Health study of nearly 3,000 adults found that even when Black and Latino households have similar wealth to white households, they receive fewer health benefits from that wealth because residential segregation, healthcare discrimination, and systemic devaluation of assets in communities of color reduce the positive health impacts of money that other groups take for granted.
The 2025 Racial Inequities in U.S. Housing Report found that the homeownership gap between white and
Black Americans is wider today than it was before the Civil Rights era. The †rump Regime responded by
eliminating equity-related initiatives and gutting fair housing enforcement. In formerly redlined neighborhoods, research found that land temperatures are up to 36 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in
non-redlined neighborhoods because highways were built through them using heat-retaining materials
and green space was denied. The people who live in those neighborhoods now are overwhelmingly people of color. They are hotter. They are sicker. They are poorer. The government calls it a coincidence.
Part Seven: Who Does the Dangerous Work
Data from the Urban Institute found that 31% of Hispanic workers and 33% of Black workers are in essential jobs requiring in-person, close-contact work — compared to 26% of white workers. These are the workers who cannot work from home. These are the workers IÇE raids target at farms, construction sites, and factories. These are the workers who got sick first and died first during the pandemic. And these are the workers this Regime is now terrorizing at their workplaces, in their cars on the way to their jobs, and in their homes.
What You Can Do Right Now
Bearing witness is not enough. Here is what action looks like:
Hear their stories directly. Stories of Immigrants collects and amplifies immigrant voices, and their Ally Network gives you everything you need to stand with immigrant families. Sign up. Show up. Listen first.
Learn how to document IÇE. IÇE Watch Resources provides the SALUTE protocol for documenting
enforcement actions (Size, Actions, Location, Uniforms, Time, Equipment), whistle warning systems, Know Your Rights cards in multiple languages, how to start an IÇE Watch school patrol, and digital security guides for activists.
Know the legal landscape. The Immigrant Defense Project documents enforcement tactics and provides legal resources. The National Immigration Legal Services Directory can connect people with free legal help. ILRC's Red Cards, available in multiple languages, tell people their rights when IÇE comes to their door.
Demand legal representation for all. The Vera Institute's dashboard tracks the representation crisis in real time. Contact your representatives and demand universal legal representation in immigration court. Call the Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
Make the deaths visible. The Deportation Data Project obtains internal government data through FOIA litigation. The AILA deaths tracker maintains the most complete public list of IÇE deaths. IÇE's own detainee death reporting page, incomplete and deliberately obscured, is still a primary source. Share all of it. Make the names visible.
Connect with Citizens Against Tyranny. Find us on Substack, Communities, UpScrolled, and more on LinkTree. We are organizing. We are not stopping. We want you with us.
Racism in Amerikkka is not a relic. It is not a scar. It is a living, funded, staffed, legally protected, and
deliberately obscured system that is killing people right now — in detention centers, in hospitals, in
courtrooms, on street corners, in neighborhoods where the air is hotter and the water is worse and the
school funding runs out first.
Their names were Pete. Shiraz. Jean Wilson. Fouad. Delvin. Nenko. Luis. And Geraldo, who said 'I can't
breathe,' and died.
These are only a few of the names we know. Only the cases from ten weeks. Only the deaths IÇE has admitted to and reported. The real number is higher. The Regime knows it. We know it. And we refuse to look away.
References
The Intercept — Private Prison Falsified Records in Detainee's Death in ICE Custody
AILA — Deaths at Adult Detention Centers (complete list)
PBS NewsHour — Cuban immigrant in ICE custody died of homicide due to asphyxia
Texas Tribune — El Paso medical examiner rules death in ICE camp a homicide
NPR — Death of detainee at ICE detention center in Texas ruled a homicide
ACLU — Renews Calls for Closure of Camp East Montana
New Jersey Monitor — 41-year-old detainee at Newark migrant jail died in custody
Jezebel — A Healthy 41-Year-Old Entered ICE Detainment. Five Hours Later He Was Dead.
Religion News Service — Eritrean imam dies in ICE custody
WPSU — Death at Moshannon ICE detention center has advocates calling for shutdown
Mississippi Free Press — Nicaraguan man in ICE custody dies in Mississippi hospital
Chicago Sun-Times — Bulgarian-born Chicagoan dies in ICE custody