Last week, NPR released a report exposing the overcrowding, starvation, and medical neglect in Florida’s immigration detention centers. It reinforces what has long been documented about the massive United States immigration detention system.

In recent months, immigration officers have detained people seeking asylum and those who have been living and working in their communities for years. Some have been undocumented and others have had valid temporary or permanent legal residency. Regardless of their circumstances, they have been locked up in deplorable conditions and separated from their families. Many have been sent to detention centers thousands of miles away from their homes. This is an escalation of an immigration detention system that was already ripping families apart and putting lives in danger.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently holding roughly 50,000 people, and over the last 10 years, it has booked people into detention roughly 3 million times. Though Congress has already directed exorbitant amounts of money toward funding this cruel system, the Trump administration is seeking an additional $45 billion to ramp up this practice and increase the nation’s capacity to detain and deport, with the goal of removing 1 million people annually.

But this expansion—indeed, immigration detention as a whole—is entirely unnecessary. The federal government’s own data shows that detention does not deter migration, and detention is not necessary to ensure that people appear in court for immigration hearings. As the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates globally, combatting civil immigration detention is inextricably linked with addressing our country’s mass incarceration crisis.

Hundreds of facilities—and counting

Vera’s ICE Detention Trends dashboard, which provides insight into the detention network the agency operates, shows that in March 2020, ICE was holding people in 409 facilities but only acknowledged 221 of them. In a forthcoming update to the dashboard, Vera researchers found that as of February 2025, ICE was holding people in 389 facilities, although it acknowledged just 122 of them on its website. Over 16 years, ICE has detained people across 1,357 facilities total—not only private detention facilities and local jails, but also unexpected places like hotels, hospitals, airports, and military bases that are excluded from public reporting.

As the Trump administration has escalated its mass detention and deportation efforts, it has expanded its use of federal prisons, army bases, and soft-sided tent facilities to detain people. It deported hundreds of people to El Salvador, paying the country $6 million to incarcerate people in the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), its notorious mega-prison. The administration planned to send as many as 30,000 people to Guantanamo Bay, but those plans have stalled amid ongoing legal, logistical, and financial hurdles. It has also attempted to deport people to Libya and South Sudan.

Horrific conditions

People held in immigration detention may spend years enduring deplorable conditions designed to dehumanize them. Survivors have reported physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. Woefully inadequate medical care and neglect have led to preventable deaths. Thousands have been subjected to solitary confinement, where they are isolated in small cells for days, weeks, or even years. Even before last week’s NPR report, people in ICE detention reported being left on a bus, chained for hours, without food, water, or a toilet; others have said they were told by guards to urinate on the floor.

Children are not excluded—they are often separated from their caregivers and endure similarly appalling conditions. Ana, an advocate for immigrants’ rights from Guatemala who spoke with Vera about her experience in a detention facility, recalled hearing the cries of children from her cell—including her young son, who’d been taken from her.

“We had to sleep on concrete benches or the floor because there were so many of us. I was cold and so sad to be there,” she said. “They give you aluminum to wrap yourself in, but it doesn’t warm you.”

In 2019, the federal government itself reported that conditions in immigration detention were inhumane. This horrifying reality will likely only grow more prevalent as the Trump administration has indicated that it will lower detention standards even further to increase detention capacity. Also in 2019, Congress created the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman to investigate complaints in immigration detention, but the Trump administration recently gutted this department, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which had been charged with investigating accusations of civil rights violations against both immigrants and U.S. citizens.

No legal representation

Because there is no right to government-funded legal representation for people facing deportation, the majority of those in immigration court—about 62 percent—have no attorney to advise them of their rights or advocate for their release from detention. Legal representation is expensive, and people are frequently held in remote facilities far from their community. And even if they can find an attorney, they often face barriers communicating with them.

The Trump administration’s tactics are a direct attack on due process. People with lawful claims to remain in the United States have already been deported simply because they could not afford or access an attorney. The administration’s recent moves to terminate bipartisan-supported legal orientation and referrals services within detention facilities and to end legal help for immigrants with mental health conditions only exacerbate this crisis.

Who profits from immigration detention

As the number of people held in immigration detention increases, often so do revenues for the private prison companies that run many facilities. In 2023, more than 90 percent of the then-30,000 people in immigration detention on any given day were held in facilities run by private prison corporations, including GEO Group, CoreCivic, and LaSalle Corrections, which make millions of dollars every year depriving people in civil proceedings of their liberty. These private prison companies now stand to gain even more.

Local officials and sheriffs are also incentivized to expand existing jails or build new ones, chasing prospective revenue from renting jail beds to federal agencies. In fact, local jails comprise the most common type of facility in ICE’s detention network. Instead of investing in schools or health care, many local governments spend on jails, growing increasingly reliant on incarceration for future revenue.

The United States immigration detention system is as horrific as it is unnecessary. And while some actors stand to benefit, this system costs all of us—not just in dollars, but in the erosion of our shared values of dignity and justice. The Trump administration’s detention and deportation agenda diverts billions from the investments our communities need—investments that foster real public safety. Inflicting cruelty on those seeking refuge and opportunity in this country and on those who have called the United States home for decades does nothing to achieve that goal.