The Trump administration has created a human rights crisis with its draconian, made-for-TV campaign of mass deportation. As arrests ramp up across the country, three people died inside immigration jails and detention centers in April alone, bringing the total number of people to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since Trump returned to office to at least seven, according to the Detention Watch Network and media reports.
Brayan Garzón-Rayo, a 27-year-old man from Colombia who lived with his family in St. Louis, died on April 8 at the Phelps County Jail in Missouri, where the local sheriff contracts with ICE to incarcerate immigrants. Nhon Nguc Nguyen, 55, from Vietnam, died on April 16 after spending two months in ICE custody. He was being held at the El Paso Processing Center in Texas.
Democrats in Congress are demanding answers following the death of Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old citizen of Haiti, who died on April 25 at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, after several weeks of being shuffled between immigration jails in Louisiana, Florida and Puerto Rico.
Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat from Florida and the only Haitian member of Congress, questioned whether ICE provided Blaise with adequate medical care as required by law.
“Marie had been complaining about chest pain for hours,” said Cherfilus-McCormick, who called for a transparent investigation into Blaise’s death. “They gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. Unfortunately, Marie never woke up. Her loved ones deserve answers. They deserve accountability.”
In a statement on Blaise’s death, ICE repeated a boilerplate line claiming that “comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.” The agency used identical language in news releases about the deaths of Garzón-Rayo and Nguyen.
However, multiple studies by physicians and human rights groups have shown that dozens of people have died preventable deaths in jails and prisons run by ICE and its contractors in the past, and advocates say conditions are rapidly deteriorating as the Trump administration packs facilities as part of his war on immigrants.
“Right now, there are nearly 50,000 people in ICE detention, reaching numbers we’ve only seen in Trump’s first term,” said Carly Pérez Fernández, communications director at Detention Watch Network, in a statement announcing the recent deaths in ICE custody on Wednesday. “Trump’s cruel, multi-layered detention expansion plan is exacerbating the detention system that is proven to be inherently inhumane. No one should suffer in these conditions.”
As existing facilities run out of beds, according to the Associated Press, the Trump administration is scrambling to sign fresh contracts with private prison companies to expand capacity to incarcerate up to 84,000 more people. Reports of inhumane conditions are piling up.
At every turn, advocates and family members are desperately pushing back on the official narrative about conditions inside. As a result, horror stories leak out on a daily basis from the byzantine system of immigration jails and prisons managed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The incarcerated population continues to grow as the Trump administration cancels asylum and humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of people and launches aggressive immigration raids, including a six-day sweep in Florida that resulted in more than 1,120 arrests this week.
By the end of March, the number of incarcerated adults had increased by 21 percent to more than 49,000 since mid-December, according to ICE data. As a matter of policy, the Trump administration is ignoring alternatives to incarceration and denying bond to many immigrants as part of a larger plan to deport as many undocumented people as quickly as possible.
Katie Blankenship, managing partner for the human rights group Sanctuary of the South, said “parole is over” for immigration detainees, meaning that ICE is refusing to release people while judges consider their immigration claims.
“Bond eligibility has shrunk based on the Laiken Riley Act,” Blankenship said in an interview, referring to the law championed by Republicans and signed by Trump earlier this year. The law requires DHS to detain undocumented people charged with shoplifting or other offenses ranging from drunk driving to assault, even if the initial arrest occurred years ago and did not result in conviction.
Blankenship advocates for people incarcerated at the Krome North Service Processing Center in Florida, one of the nation’s oldest and most notorious immigration jails. In early April, Americans for Immigrant Justice submitted testimonies to the United Nations Human Rights Council from detainees who said they were forced to sleep on the floor in crowded rooms, and while shackled on a bus in a parking lot, while incarcerated at Krome.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) said she saw a “tent city” outside of the Krome North Service Processing Center during a recent visit. Wilson had requested a tour of the facility after a viral video confirmed reports of dangerous overcrowding and the suspicious deaths of two detainees sparked protests.
Earlier this week, ICE confirmed the construction of a massive tent structure outside the facility to hold additional detainees in response to overcrowding. ICE told local media that the tent would have air conditioning and meet federal standards for housing people.
Blankenship said public protests and complaints from Democrats in Congress have put pressure on ICE to decrease the population at Krome in recent weeks, but she expects overcrowding to continue to be a problem as Trump’s crackdown continues.
“They are putting lipstick on a pig to get the press off their back and the [members of Congress] off their back,” Blankenship said. “We are coming into the summer months … you know, Krome is in the Everglades, and it’s not like they are giving them the highest-quality stuff.”
ICE did not respond to requests for comment about the reported deaths in its custody and conditions within Krome and other immigration jails.
Blankenship said immigrants and their advocates have lodged hundreds of complaints about a lack of water and food, unsanitary conditions, and medical neglect at Krome. Facing an outpouring of complaints, the Trump administration shut down three civil rights and oversight offices at the DHS that are charged with investigating such claims.
“Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
On April 24, human rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging the closure of the oversight offices, which were created by Congress after past scandals over civil liberties violations.
The danger extends far beyond Florida. A review of the state’s six federal immigration prisons released by investigators at the California Department of Justice this week found that basic mental health and suicide prevention services continue to fall short even as the population has nearly doubled since 2021.
“California’s facility reviews remain especially critical in light of efforts by the Trump Administration to both eliminate oversight of conditions at immigration detention facilities and increase its inhumane campaign of mass immigration enforcement, potentially exacerbating critical issues already present in these facilities by packing them with more people,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement this week.
At the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, which is run by the private prison company GEO Group, immigration detainees have launched six hunger strikes in protest of their confinement in dismal conditions over the past four months, according to Rufina Reyes, an organizer with La Resistencia, a local immigrant rights group.
Activists believe there are currently about 1,500 people being held at the immigration jail, Reyes said. While the exact number is not publicly known, reports suggest the current population is likely the highest it’s been since 2020.
“We also know there are more people being deported each week and more people arriving each week,” Reyes said in an interview.
The Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington has produced a number of reports on alleged abuses at the Northwest Detention Center, including overuse of solitary confinement, the denial of access to medical care, poor hygiene and sanitation, frequent uses of physical force and chemical gases and a lack of adequate responses to reported sexual abuse.
Earlier this week, the researchers released new data showing that Tacoma police routinely ignore crimes reported by people detained at the facility. Over the past 10 years, only 2 out of 157 reports of abuse or assault at Northwest Detention Facility were prosecuted — and in both cases the victims were jail staff, not incarcerated immigrants.
With Northwest Detention Center looming in the background, Reyes said Trump’s immigration crackdown has struck immigrant communities with terror.
“One of the impacts is that, because a lot of people are scared, they have stopped working,” Reyes said. “We know about one family that has been impacted in particular that is from one of the smaller cities, and they haven’t left their house because they have a lot of fear.”
Asked how policy makers should respond, Reyes said politicians should see the reality of immigration detention under Trump for themselves.
“More than anything, we ask politicians to visit the detention centers and also to call for the detention centers to be shut down,” Reyes said.
Correction: The Laken Riley Act was signed in 2025 by President Trump, not Joe Biden in 2024 as an earlier version of this story stated.
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