Detention Camps in the U.S.: Scale, Deaths, and CECOT Deportations

Immigration detention camps in the United States now hold more people than at any point in the system’s history. As of late January 2026, over 72,000 people were in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on any given day, roughly double the population when President Trump began his second term.¹² The growth has been driven by tens of billions in new federal funding, a network of private contractors, and executive actions that reshape who can be detained and for how long. It has also coincided with the highest annual death toll since ICE was created, more than a thousand documented reports of abuse, and the near-elimination of the internal offices that used to investigate complaints.

How Large the System Has Become

When President Trump took office in January 2025, roughly 37,000 to 40,000 people were held in immigration detention daily. By December 2025 the population was nearly 66,000, and by late January 2026 it exceeded 72,000.¹ The Department of Homeland Security has stated a goal of 100,000 beds, and analysts estimate authorized funding could eventually support as many as 135,000.²

By the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more detention facilities than at the start of the year, a 91% increase.² People are now held at more than 220 sites, ranging from county jails and reopened state prisons to tent camps on military bases, converted commercial warehouses, and a Florida-run facility in the Everglades that came to be called “Alligator Alcatraz.” Five states — Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, and Georgia — account for over 60% of book-ins recorded since January 2025.¹

Who Is Being Detained

The composition of the detained population has shifted sharply. The number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day rose by 2,450% during 2025. Discretionary releases fell by 87% between January and November 2025, while at-large arrests by ICE increased 600%.²

The Laken Riley Act, signed January 29, 2025, expanded mandatory detention to noncitizens who are charged with, arrested for, or convicted of burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or any crime resulting in death or serious bodily injury.³ The administration also rescinded guidelines that had prohibited immigration arrests at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship, and tripled the number of 287(g) agreements deputizing local law enforcement — from 135 in December 2024 to 456 by April 2025.⁴

Family detention, largely ended under the Biden administration in 2021, has been revived. The Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas was reopened, and CoreCivic began reopening the South Texas Family Residential Center to house 2,400 people.⁵⁶ ICE now detains an average of about 170 children daily, a more than sixfold increase over the final 16 months of the Biden administration. Since January 2025, at least 3,800 children have been booked into ICE detention, and at least 1,000 have been held longer than the 20-day limit set by the courts under the 1997 Flores settlement. In August 2025, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee denied a Department of Justice motion to terminate Flores, calling the government’s argument that improved conditions justified ending the agreement “nonsensical.”⁷

Funding, Warehouses, and Private Contractors

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1), signed July 4, 2025, is the financial engine behind the expansion. It allocated $45 billion specifically for expanding immigration detention capacity and nearly $30 billion more for ICE enforcement and deportation, including funding to hire 10,000 new officers. ICE’s total detention budget rose to at least $14 billion annually through fiscal year 2029, a 308% increase over FY 2024.⁸ The average daily cost of detaining one person is roughly $152, though ICE typically pays county jails between $70 and $110 per bed per day.⁹

Under what ICE calls the “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” the agency is shifting from leasing space to building a network of 34 ICE-owned facilities, primarily converted commercial warehouses. The plan calls for 16 processing centers holding 1,000 to 1,500 people each for short stays, eight large-scale centers holding 7,000 to 10,000 people, and 10 “turnkey” jails or prisons ICE intends to purchase outright. As of February 2026, ICE had spent more than $700 million to acquire nine warehouses, with large-scale sites designated in Social Circle, Georgia; Socorro, Texas; and Tremont, Pennsylvania. Much of this spending flows through a Department of Defense procurement mechanism called WEXMAC-TITUS, which lets ICE award task orders to pre-qualified vendors, including The GEO Group, without standard competitive bidding.¹⁰

Roughly 86% of immigrant detainees are held in privately run facilities. The GEO Group received $2.1 billion in total federal obligations in 2025; CoreCivic received $653.5 million. CSI Aviation ($1.1 billion), Classic Air Charter ($800.2 million), and MVM Inc. ($1.1 billion) provide detainee transportation. The GEO Group’s PAC contributed $1 million to the Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC in 2024, and both GEO Group and CoreCivic donated $500,000 to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee. Political scientist Frank Baumgartner told OpenSecrets that contracts are being awarded with “relatively little oversight” because of the speed at which they are processed.¹¹

Deaths in Custody

Between January 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026, 52 people died in ICE custody, according to Human Rights Watch, more than doubling the mortality rate from the year before.¹² The 33 deaths recorded in calendar year 2025 were the most in any single year since ICE was created in 2003. A San Francisco Chronicle analysis of 32 cases, conducted with 14 medical specialists, found that at least 17 people died after facility medical staff delayed or failed to provide critical care.¹³

Seven deaths between January 2025 and January 2026 were apparent suicides, compared to one reported suicide in all of 2024. Medical experts from Physicians for Human Rights reviewed 39 deaths from that period and found a “high suspicion” of inadequate or delayed health care in many cases, suggesting a number may have been preventable.¹² Most deaths occurred at facilities that had experienced significantly elevated population levels in the two weeks preceding the death.

Reports of Abuse and Neglect

A Senate investigation led by Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia identified 1,037 credible reports of human rights abuses in immigration detention between January 20, 2025, and January 12, 2026. The reports included 206 accounts of medical neglect, 181 of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, 161 of denial of access to attorneys, 139 of denial of food or water, 102 of imposed sleep deprivation, and 88 of physical or sexual abuse. Investigators also documented 40 reports of mistreatment of children and 26 involving pregnant women.¹⁴

Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss

Camp East Montana, a tent-based facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso, opened in August 2025 and holds over 2,700 people, making it the nation’s largest immigration detention center. Based on 45 interviews and 16 signed declarations, the ACLU documented reports of guards beating detainees, crushing testicles, and stomping on restrained individuals, along with chronic food shortages, tents and bathrooms flooded with fecal matter, and detainees going weeks without prescribed medication.¹⁵

In January 2026, the El Paso County Medical Examiner ruled the death of 55-year-old Cuban detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos a homicide, with the cause identified as asphyxia due to neck and torso compression. A witness reported that Lunas Campos was held down by at least five guards while handcuffed and that one guard squeezed his neck until he lost consciousness. ICE initially described the incident as a response to a suicide attempt; DHS later characterized it as a “spontaneous use of force.” The ruling was the first homicide finding for an ICE detainee death linked to staff in at least 15 years.¹⁶ The facility also experienced a measles outbreak with at least 14 confirmed cases, along with reported cases of tuberculosis and COVID-19. A February 2026 ICE inspection identified 49 violations of detention standards, including inadequate medical care and failure to document suicide prevention checks. In March 2026, ICE terminated its $1.2 billion contract with facility operator Acquisition Logistics LLC and awarded a new contract to Amentum Services Inc.¹⁷ On May 30, 2026, the ACLU and a coalition of legal groups filed a class action, Akari Angye et al. v. ICE, alleging Fifth Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act violations at the facility.¹⁸

The Everglades Facility

The Everglades Detention Facility in Ochopee, Florida, sits on an abandoned airstrip and was set up by Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration in July 2025, operating jointly with ICE and the Florida Department of Emergency Management. Detainees reported worms in the food, non-functioning toilets, floors flooded with fecal waste, and mosquito infestations.¹⁹ A Senate investigation documented allegations that detainees were confined in a small outdoor cage known as “the box,” shackled in stress positions for hours without food or water.²⁰ In March 2026, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction in H.C.R. v. Noem, ordering ICE to provide detainees confidential phone calls and attorney visits without prescheduling.²¹

Oversight Offices Cut to Skeleton Staff

On March 21, 2025, DHS issued “Reduction in Force” notices across three internal oversight offices. DHS leadership described the offices as “internal adversaries” and “roadblocks to enforcement.”²² The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL, was cut from about 150 staff to nine, and by December 2025 had only two full-time investigators. Around 550 active civil rights investigations were underway when the cuts happened.²³ The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman was reduced by 96%, leaving five staff, and complaints dropped from 12,664 in FY 2023 to 280 between March and December 2025. The Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman was reduced by 95%, retaining two staff.

Detention inspections by the ombudsman office are now limited to announced visits by one or two staff members, without the medical or environmental experts who used to participate. As of February 2026, CRCL had not issued any recommendation memos since the March 2025 firings.²² In February 2025, the administration also removed most records of past CRCL investigations from the DHS website.²³ ICE inspections conducted by the separate Office of Detention Oversight have also dropped sharply, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.¹³

Bond Hearings and the Fight Over Who Can Be Released

Immigration detention is classified as civil, not criminal. Whether a detained person can even ask an immigration judge for release on bond became a battleground in 2025. A Board of Immigration Appeals decision, Matter of Yajure Hurtado, ruled that noncitizens who entered the country without inspection fall under INA § 235(b)(2) rather than the general detention provision in § 236(a), effectively stripping immigration judges of authority to hold bond hearings for a large share of the detained population.²⁴ DHS adopted the interpretation in July 2025.

In November 2025, a federal district court in the class action Maldonado Bautista overruled Yajure Hurtado and ordered the government to restore bond hearings. When the government failed to comply, the court issued a second enforcement order in February 2026 and formally vacated the BIA decision. The ruling currently applies nationwide, with one exception: the Fifth Circuit upheld the BIA’s framework in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, so immigration judges in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi may continue denying bond hearings under it.²⁵ In May 2026, the Sixth Circuit held in Lopez-Campos v. Raycraft that ICE was illegally detaining immigrants without access to bond hearings.²⁶

Deportations to CECOT Under the Alien Enemies Act

Not everyone brought into the system remains inside U.S. facilities. On March 14, 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to authorize the “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” of Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older alleged to be members of Tren de Aragua.²⁷ Before 2025, the Act had been invoked only three times in American history, each during a declared war.²⁸

Under a $6 million agreement between the United States and El Salvador, roughly 288 people were deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) across five flights in March and April 2025. Released detainees described daily beatings, forced sexual acts, and rubber bullets fired into cells. In July 2025, 252 of the deported Venezuelans were released from CECOT as part of a U.S.–Venezuela prisoner exchange; an estimated 35 Salvadoran men remained.²⁹ In September 2025, the Fifth Circuit blocked the administration from using the Act against Venezuelans in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, finding “no invasion or predatory incursion” to justify its invocation.³⁰ In February 2026, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to facilitate the return of some deportees so they could challenge their removals.³¹

Alternatives to Detention and Local Pushback

ICE’s primary alternative to physical detention is the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), operated by BI, Inc., a subsidiary of The GEO Group. It uses GPS ankle monitors, a smartphone app called SmartLINK that relies on facial recognition, and telephonic check-ins, and has enrolled over 300,000 people at its peak. ISAP costs less than $4.20 per participant per day, versus roughly $152 per day for detention.³² The now-defunct Family Case Management Program achieved over 99% court appearance rates at $38 per person per day. Advocacy groups and researchers note, however, that electronic monitoring has grown alongside physical detention rather than replacing it.³³

Several communities have blocked proposed detention sites. Residents and local officials halted planned facilities in Merrimack, New Hampshire; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Hutchins, Texas; and Social Circle, Georgia, where the city blocked water service to a planned warehouse conversion.¹ Maryland, New Jersey, and Michigan have filed lawsuits to block warehouse-to-detention conversions, and a federal judge in Maryland temporarily halted one conversion over sewage capacity concerns.²⁶ California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have passed legislation to phase out immigration detention, and New Mexico, New York, and Massachusetts are pursuing similar measures.

1
NPR. ICE’s Growing Detention Footprint and the Communities Fighting Back
2
American Immigration Council. Immigration Detention in the United States
3
Department of Justice. Laken Riley Act Implementation Guidance
4
Migration Policy Institute. Trump 2.0 Immigration: The First 100 Days
5
The Marshall Project. ICE Kids in Detention Numbers
6
Brennan Center for Justice. Detention of Families Facing Deportation Proceedings
7
Spectrum News. Judge Denies Trump Administration Request to End Policy Protecting Immigrant Children in Custody
8
American Immigration Council. Big Beautiful Bill Immigration and Border Security Fact Sheet
9
Brennan Center for Justice. How ICE’s Budget Boom Is Changing Immigration Detention
10
American Immigration Council. ICE Buys Warehouses for Immigration Detention
11
OpenSecrets. Some Major Trump Donors Are Now Reaping Billions in ICE Contracts
12
Human Rights Watch. Dying in Detention: Rising Deaths in an Expanding US Immigration Detention System
13
San Francisco Chronicle. ICE Detention Deaths Database
14
Office of Senator Jon Ossoff. Report: Patterns of Abuse in Immigration Detention
15
ACLU. Detained Immigrants Detail Physical Abuse and Inhumane Conditions at Largest Immigration Detention Center in the U.S.
16
PBS NewsHour. Cuban Immigrant in ICE Custody Died of Homicide Due to Asphyxia, Autopsy Finds
17
El Paso Matters. ICE Replacing Camp East Montana Detention Center Operator
18
NPR. Immigrant Detainees Sue Over Texas Camp East Montana
19
PBS NewsHour. All Detainees From Immigration Facility ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Have Been Transferred
20
Office of Senator Jon Ossoff. Use of the Box at Everglades Detention Facility
21
ACLU. Federal Court Orders ICE to Provide Access to Legal Counsel at Alligator Alcatraz
22
WOLA. Denouncing Into the Void: The Dismantling of Internal Oversight and Accountability at DHS
23
The Guardian. DHS Watchdog Offices Gutted by Trump Administration
24
American Immigration Council. INA 235(b) Detention Practice Advisory
25
National Immigration Law Center. Rapid Response Update on Bond Eligibility for Undocumented Immigrants
26
ACLU. Deaths in Detention: ICE Is Rapidly Expanding Detention Camps Into Warehouses Despite Record Deaths
27
White House. Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua
28
Human Rights Watch. United States: Repeal the Alien Enemies Act
29
National Immigration Law Center. Tracking the CECOT Disappearances
30
NPR. Trump Alien Enemies Act Venezuela Gangs Ruling
31
PBS NewsHour. Judge Says U.S. Must Help Return Some Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Prison
32
ICE. Alternatives to Detention
33
American Immigration Council. Alternatives to Immigration Detention: An Overview