Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Reveals Devastating Insights Into ICE Detention In Exclusive Site Visit

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed devastating insights into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, following staff site visits to two Louisiana immigration detention facilities in April.

On the exclusive site visits, Durbin released the following statement:

“My staff’s visits to the ICE detention facilities reaffirm what we’ve already known: The cruelty and inhumanity of the Trump Administration’s illegal mass deportation scheme knows no bounds.

“The government has an obligation to care for those in its custody. Instead, President Trump and his extreme loyalists like Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Tom Homan are detaining vulnerable people like pregnant women and families, gutting important oversight arms of government agencies, revoking legal resources for noncitizens, and disappearing people with no due process.

“The Trump immigration approach targets the vulnerable, punishes innocent people, wastes taxpayer dollars, and does nothing to make our communities safer. Mark my words: Democrats will continue to put a spotlight on the unpopular displays of inhumanity exhibited by this Administration, ensure they’re held accountable, and do everything we can to protect vulnerable people.”

The visits to South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, and Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana—both managed by private prison company GEO Group—provide new, incriminating insight into the cruelty of the illegal Trump mass deportation agenda, including mistreatment of vulnerable individuals like pregnant women and families, systemic dismantling of congressionally mandated oversight, and misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Key observations from the site visits include:

• The Trump Administration has begun detaining pregnant women in facilities ill-equipped to manage their well-being and safety.
• Detainees at the facility expressed serious concern for pregnant women and pregnant women told Committee staff they could not access adequate care.
• Individuals suffering from serious medical conditions struggled to receive adequate care, including easily accessible over-the-counter medications.
• Cruelty and neglect are core to Trump’s detention and deportation agenda and were present in treatment by facility staff.
• Immigrants face extended detention even after prevailing in their immigration cases, which raises basic questions about due process and the misuse of taxpayer dollars.
• The Trump Administration’s decision to shut down the duly authorized Legal Orientation Program (LOP) is a direct attack on detained individuals’ due process rights.
• The Trump Administration’s purge of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversight offices reduces opportunities for those seeking health care or experiencing abuse in custody to report complaints.

The site visits also included two exclusive interviews with detained recent graduate and lawful permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil and formerly detained Ph.D. candidate Rumeysa Öztürk, who witnessed how these facilities function as prisons and how those detained for allegedly violating civil immigration laws are treated like criminals.

“The moment you walk into Jena, your rights remain outside,” said Mahmoud Khalil, who expressed serious concern at the lack of due process for detainees at the facility.

“They treat us like animals,” said Rumeysa Öztürk, who described inadequate medical care, callous and abusive facility staff, and a sense of shared despair rooted in the dehumanizing experience of immigration detention.

For a PDF copy of the devastating insights into the detention facilities, click here.

The site visits are the latest step in Durbin’s ongoing inquiry into medical and mental health care in DHS’s facilities. Just this month, Durbin escalated congressional oversight of the Trump Administration’s aggressive expansion of immigration detention, which has created a major financial boon for private prison companies, with letters to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Department of Defense (DOD), DHS, and three major private contractors operating immigration facilities—CoreCivic, the GEO Group, and LaSalle Corrections.

Earlier this year, Durbin released a revealing investigative report on inadequate care in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities and pressed for further investigation into deficient medical care in CBP detention facilities after whistleblower reports alleged systemic failures by DHS to ensure proper oversight of its medical care contractor.

Durbin continues to actively investigate care in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, which he initiated with letters to ICE and the Government Accountability Office. A June 2024 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight found that 95 percent of documented deaths in ICE custody between 2017-2021 were likely preventable.

This oversight work was prompted by the death of Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, an eight-year-old Panamanian girl, at a CBP detention facility in Harlingen, Texas, on May 17, 2023.

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