The movement to close detention centers run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gained momentum as allegations of violence, medical negligence, and lack of transparency accumulated. In states governed by the Democratic Party, rejection of the immigration policy of Donald Trump's second administration has resulted in protests, lawsuits, "sanctuary" policies, and attempts to prevent the installation or expansion of detention facilities. While these initiatives are politically understandable and, in many cases, morally justified, their impact on people already in federal custody is more ambiguous.

This is the issue examined by Nick Miroff in a report published by The Atlantic on July 26, 2026. The journalist starts from the dispute surrounding Delaney Hall, a private detention center located in Newark, New Jersey. With a capacity for approximately one thousand people and operated by the GEO Group through a $1 billion, 15-year contract, the facility has become one of the main symbols of Democratic opposition to the policy of mass deportations. Protests against internal conditions have been occurring since May, while the state government and other Democratic authorities also seek to prevent the opening of a larger unit elsewhere in New Jersey.

The closure of centers like Delaney Hall can be presented as a political victory because it reduces the infrastructure immediately available to ICE, increases its logistical costs, and makes it more difficult to carry out large-scale immigration operations. For years, this strategy has been associated with sanctuary policies whereby state and municipal governments limit the cooperation of their institutions with federal immigration authorities. The problem, however, is that a Democratic state's ability to exclude ICE facilities from its territory does not correspond to its ability to prevent federal detention. This means that local closure does not necessarily eliminate immigration incarceration: it may only displace it.

This distinction became even more noticeable after the Republican administration allocated more than $100 billion in additional funds to ICE through the budget reconciliation process, an amount equivalent, according to Miroff, to approximately ten times the agency's previous annual budget. With this financial availability, it is no longer possible to assume that the shortage of beds in Democratic states will force the federal government to reduce detentions. Conversely, ICE can transport people to cheaper facilities in the South, particularly in Texas and Louisiana.

Thus, the broader issue is whether the local strategy alters federal detention policy or merely transfers its human consequences to other territories.

The territorial paradox: removing ICE or departing the detainees?

The American immigration infrastructure already presents a strong territorial asymmetry. There are relatively few detention centers near the large cities of the North and coastal regions, where large migrant communities are concentrated, while a disproportionate share of the units is located in Texas and Louisiana. This distribution stems, in part, from the lower cost of operation in the southern states and their proximity to airports and land routes used in deportations to Mexico and other destinations.

The consequence is that the closure of a unit in a Democratic state can increase the distance between detainees and their support networks. John Gihon, a former ICE lawyer and member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), described the removal of facilities from Democratic jurisdictions as a "limited victory" for activists, but potentially harmful to the detainees themselves. According to him: “ICE will find space in some detention center. Most of the time, that place will be further away from a state governed by Democrats, further away from favorable federal courts, and in a region with much worse conditions”. Gihon's observation highlights that the location of custody is not a secondary element. In cities like New York and Chicago, there is a greater concentration of support organizations, specialized lawyers, community networks, and assistance structures capable of monitoring asylum processes and contesting deportation orders. Proximity also facilitates family visits and regular communication between lawyers and clients. In contrast, immigration courts in Texas and Louisiana have some of the highest asylum rejection rates in the country, while New York courts register relatively more favorable results for applicants. The transfer, therefore, modifies the concrete conditions of access to justice. An individual removed from New Jersey to Texas may lose frequent contact with their family, have difficulty gathering documents, be separated from their lawyer, and have their case decided in a jurisdiction statistically less likely to grant protection. It is in this sense that the closure of Delaney Hall may simultaneously represent a legitimate rejection of the detention apparatus and an unintentional aggravation of the vulnerability of detainees.

Tom Homan, responsible for border policy in the Trump administration and former director of ICE, publicly exploited this contradiction: in response to Democratic authorities in New Jersey, he stated that the closure of the unit would lead the government to transport detainees to Texas or Arizona, since arrest and deportation operations would continue. The statement has an evident coercive character: the federal government uses the possibility of family separation as a way to pressure local authorities. However, while the threat should not be normalized, it exposes a real limitation of the state strategy. As long as ICE has the financial resources, personnel, and federal authority to carry out transfers, closing a specific facility does not mean halting the detention system. The challenge lies in not confusing the territorial withdrawal of the institution with the effective protection of the people in its custody, since closing a center may make the violence less visible, shifting it to regions where public oversight, legal assistance, and institutional resistance are weaker.

Texas as a destination for expansion: the case of Camp East Montana

Despite allegations of abuse and calls for closure, ICE has extended the contract for Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, for at least another year. The extension is expected to cost taxpayers an additional $776 million. An Al Jazeera report, published on July 28, 2026, clarifies the ills behind this relocation decision: three people have died at the facility since its opening on August 1, 2025. At the end of February 2026, approximately 1,600 non-citizens were being held there. Furthermore, a report by the Government Accountability Office, published in June, concluded that the unit did not meet fundamental detention standards, jeopardizing the safety of detainees and staff alike. Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas told Al Jazeera, "They are receiving substandard food. They are not receiving the medical care they need. This place needs to be shut down." A joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also pointed to serious assaults by guards, medical negligence, overcrowding, and a lack of transparency. In testimony to investigators, a detainee reported that guards collectively assaulted inmates when someone demanded food, medication, or respect for their rights. ICE denied the accusations, maintaining that no one was being beaten or mistreated and that detainees had access to food, medical care, lawyers, and communication with their families. The contradiction between the accounts, however, reinforces the centrality of independent oversight mechanisms. Simple institutional denial is not enough when the same agency responsible for custody controls much of the information about internal conditions, medical care, and the circumstances of deaths.

The data from Human Rights Watch helps to illustrate the specific gravity of Camp East Montana: between its opening and June 4, 2026, three deaths were recorded at the facility. They represented 6.1% of all deaths that occurred in ICE custody since the beginning of Trump's second term, a proportion almost twice as high as the facility's share of the total days of detention in the system. Among the dead was Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban citizen. According to the analysis presented by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, his death, on January 3, 2026, resulted from asphyxiation caused by compression of the neck and torso during the use of force by officials. Victor Manuel Diaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan, died by suicide in the same unit on January 14, after only nine days in custody. Francisco Gaspar Andres, a 48-year-old Guatemalan, died in December 2025 after remaining detained for ninety-four days at Camp East Montana.

In this context, the renewal of the contract goes beyond an administrative decision and brings to light a clear political orientation in which, even in the face of deaths, allegations of assault, negligence, and official findings of non-compliance with standards, the federal government chose to preserve and finance detention capacity. Camp East Montana thus demonstrates that the reduction of ICE infrastructure in Democratic states can be accompanied by the consolidation of facilities in states where costs are lower and political resistance exerts less influence on the federal government.

Deaths in custody: the increase in mortality among detainees expressed numerically

The Human Rights Watch report, compiled with medical analysis from Physicians for Human Rights, prevents the debate from being treated merely as an administrative controversy between state and federal governments. Between January 20, 2025, and June 4, 2026 - the first 500 days of Trump's second term - 52 people died in ICE custody. The mortality rate reached its highest level in over a decade, becoming almost four times higher than that recorded during the Biden administration and more than two and a half times higher than that observed during Trump's first term.

The increase cannot be explained solely by the rise in the detained population. Between January 2025 and January 2026, the number of people in custody increased by 77%, from approximately 40,000 to over 71,000. During the same period, however, the annual number of deaths more than tripled, resulting in an increase of nearly 140% in the mortality rate. This indicates that the expansion of detention occurred without a proportional expansion of the capacity for care, supervision, and emergency prevention. The analysis also found that 14 of the 39 deaths examined during the first year of the second term (about 36%) occurred less than two weeks after the start of custody. Twelve people died in less than a week. Seven deaths were classified as apparent suicides, while others resulted from strokes, heart disease, infections, respiratory failure, and traumatic causes. In addition, 64% of death notifications were published after the 48-hour deadline established by ICE's own policy.

The lack of information is part of the problem. Although ICE is supposed to release an initial notification within 48 hours and a more detailed report within 30 days, experts from Physicians for Human Rights concluded that, in all 39 cases clinically analyzed, the public data was insufficient for a definitive assessment of the circumstances of death and the quality of care provided. Still, the available documentation allowed for the identification of strong evidence of inadequate or delayed medical care.

Other cases point to equally serious failures: people with deteriorating respiratory symptoms who did not receive intervention before being found unconscious; patients with risk factors for sepsis who were not subjected to tests or antibiotic treatment; delays in initiating resuscitation maneuvers; and individuals with mental health crises who did not receive adequate follow-up before dying by suicide.

Human Rights Watch therefore argues that medical negligence, inadequate conditions, and lack of transparency can constitute violations of both the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” and the “Convention against Torture,” especially when they result in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The organization recommends that detention be used only as a last resort, accompanied by qualified medical screening, continuous access to external care, independent monitoring, and public investigation of all deaths.

Between closure and displacement: the humanitarian limits of resistance to ICE

Democratic states face a politically difficult dilemma: maintaining detention centers within their territories may mean tolerating the operation of an immigration policy marked by death, neglect, violence, and mass incarceration. Closing them, however, may lead to the transfer of detainees to distant units, especially in Texas and Louisiana, where access to family, legal assistance, and more favorable courts tends to be lower. A policy focused exclusively on keeping ICE out of Democratic jurisdictions risks producing a form of internal externalization: state violence is removed from the field of vision of politically mobilized communities and concentrated in regions where migrants find fewer instruments of protection (as in the case of Camp East Montana). From this perspective, the criterion of "success" should not be restricted to the number of centers removed from Democratic states but should encompass the reduction in the number of people subjected to custody, the length of confinement, and the conditions capable of producing suffering and death. This requires prioritizing community-based alternatives to detention, restricting migrant detention to strictly necessary cases, ensuring effective access to lawyers and family members, creating independent medical oversight mechanisms, and ensuring full transparency regarding all deaths. A coherent humanitarian response must ultimately structurally reduce the State's capacity to transform human mobility into confinement, invisibility, and death.