For years, immigrant rights groups have complained about the conditions inside detention facilities, often too cold, overcrowded and sometimes unsanitary. Immigrants often don’t know when they are being released.
ICE currently is holding nearly 60,000 people, up from roughly 34,000 during the Biden administration, and immigrants are staying on average 50 days, up from 36.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration attorney in Maryland, said one client was released after 11 months, a length of time that would have shocked him before.
“The issue is not just the terrible god-awful conditions in the detention centers, it’s the feeling of not knowing when or even if people will get out of those conditions,” he said.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said he believed self-harm incidents would decline “if people had an end date in sight, even if they didn’t know what the outcome would be.”
He said immigration proceedings “drag on forever,” and detainees are increasingly losing hope.
Most detainees are men. Of those detained, more than 20,000 people in ICE custody have no criminal background aside from violations of immigration law, such as staying beyond the date their visa allowed, or crossing the border illegally, according to ICE data.
During Trump’s second term, there have been nine deaths by suicide, all men, ranging in ages from 19 to 45. Three had a history of criminal violence, four had nonviolent criminal histories, such as disorderly conduct or driving without a license. Two had no criminal record. All appear to have died by hanging.
The most recent occurred earlier this month at Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, a facility that had failed to complete suicide prevention training for all staff, according to an ICE inspection from March 2025. The detention center had also failed to continuously monitor suicidal detainees every 15 minutes as is required under ICE standards, according to an ICE inspection last March. In some cases, officials waited 125 minutes between checks, according to the inspection.
Stewart was not the only facility where suicide-related concerns were raised by the inspectors. Nationwide, there were 19 instances in which the facilities didn’t meet the suicide prevention standards since the start of Trump’s second term.
In response to the most recent suicide, ICE said the agency was committed to ensuring those in custody reside in safe environments and receive medical care.
“Suicides in DHS custody are tragic and rare. When there are signs of a detainee being at risk for suicide, staff abides by strict prevention and intervention protocol to ensure the detainee’s health and well-being is protected,” an ICE spokesperson said. “ICE requires annual suicide prevention training, enforces 15-minute checks on suicide watch, and ensures that only clinicians — not custody staff — can remove someone from suicide watch.”
DHS declined to respond on the specific incidents mentioned in this story and did not provide any statements regarding the record number of suicides.
Many detention facilities are operated by companies that won ICE contracts. CoreCivic, which runs the Stewart Detention Center, didn’t immediately comment. Another, GEO Group, which runs the South Texas facility where the pregnant woman was held, referred all questions about its detainees to ICE.
Detainees on the rise, inspections on the decline
While the number of ICE detainees has doubled, the number of inspections has dwindled. At least four offices within DHS conduct ICE inspections. Two have been gutted.
Members of Congress also periodically show up unannounced at detention facilities to receive tours and check in with detainees as a way to spot-check facilities.
But recently, when Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., made a surprise visit to ICE’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, he was told he could not speak to detainees.
Levin was handed a new policy stating that he could not talk to anyone unless he provided the names of detainees two days in advance and obtained a permission form showing the detainee consented to the meeting.
“So it’s just making it difficult, more difficult for us to do our jobs to be able to see what’s really going on inside these facilities, and, you know, keeping people in the dark is how we got into this mess in the first place,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
Typically, the DHS Office of Inspector General conducts between four and six unannounced inspections of ICE facilities per year, and the agency says it has already made hundreds of recommendations for improvements.
A $20 million federal funding increase is expected to boost inspections tenfold, according to a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office.
Mental health struggles
The 911 calls obtained by NBC News show some detainees struggling with severe mental health challenges.
At least 39 emergency calls include descriptions of inmates experiencing “acute psychosis” and an “altered mental state.” One call in Michigan detailed how a man refused psychiatric medications, wouldn’t eat for eight days and collapsed in his cell.
At the same Michigan facility, another detainee, Gabriel Leiva, was being unruly and employees removed him from his pod with other detainees. As he was shackled and handcuffed, he asked the staff to kill him, according to a police report obtained by NBC News.
The guards put Leiva into solitary confinement where he covered up the window, began “horse kicking” the door and then fashioned his clothes into a noose to kill himself.
He was discovered by guards, who called 911. Leiva told police who responded to the call that he didn’t understand why he had been removed from the group.
“No one has told him why he is by himself,” the officer wrote.
An ICE spokesperson said there was no longer anyone in the North Lake Michigan ICE detention center by that name.
Some of the deaths occurred shortly after the inmates were detained.
Victor Manuel Diaz was arrested on an immigration violation in Minneapolis on Jan. 6 and was brought to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. He died by suicide eight days later, according to ICE data.
Another death at the same facility was announced as a “presumed suicide,” but later the local coroner determined it was a homicide. It is now under investigation by the FBI and the inspector general.
Diaz’s autopsy, though, wasn’t performed by the local coroner. Instead it was handled by a military coroner, which does not usually publicly release findings, often citing sensitive operations.
“The family is deeply suspicious,” said Randall Kallinen, an attorney representing the Diaz family.
He said family members spoke to Diaz on the phone shortly after he arrived at the detention facility, and he seemed OK. They don’t believe he took his own life.
Kallinen said the family has ordered a second autopsy and are now awaiting results.
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If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 or go to 988lifeline.org to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
