Trump administration jails hundreds of immigrants in notorious federal prisons
Source: The Guardian
Thu 1 May 2025 10.00 EDT
Last modified on Thu 1 May 2025 10.02 EDT
The US government has jailed hundreds of immigrants in notorious federal prisons in a dramatic escalation of its detention practices, cutting people off from their attorneys and families and subjecting them to brutal conditions, according to accounts from behind bars.
Since February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has increasingly used Bureau of Prisons (BoP) facilities to incarcerate immigrants facing deportation, records show. The partnership between BoP and Ice, two agencies that have generally operated separately, means people accused of civil immigration violations are being imprisoned in harsh environments of federal penitentiaries run by prison guards.
Several immigration detainees said they had been mistreated, neglected and denied due process – some unable to contact anyone for days on end during their abrupt transfers to prisons, then left in the dark about their ongoing deportation cases. Some detainees described shortages of food, clothes, toilet paper and other necessities. Others alleged they were forced to live in dirty, overcrowded cells and unable to access basic medical care and regular outdoor time.
“It’s pandemonium,” said one detainee about the frenzy when he and dozens of others were moved in February from an Ice detention center in Georgia into Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Atlanta, a BoP prison recently investigated by Congress for its squalid conditions, violence and staff misconduct. “The place was filthy and disgusting. There was no communication. It was just chaos, and I had to deal with the mental state of not knowing what was happening and whether I’d be there for two months, three months, six months.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/01/trump-immigrants-federal-prisons
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