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Mass immigration arrests have led to overcrowding in detention facilities, with reports of unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
June 28, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET
Far from public view, the toll of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is unfolding in overcrowded detention facilities across the country.
Some immigrants have gone a week or more without showers. Others sleep pressed tightly together on bare floors. Medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic health problems are often going unprovided. In New York and Los Angeles, people have been held for days in cramped rooms designed for brief processing, not prolonged confinement, and their lawyers and family members have remained in the dark about their whereabouts.
The nation’s immigration detention system is buckling under the weight of record numbers as the Trump administration intensifies its enforcement agenda with raids on workplaces and arrests at immigration courts. More than 56,000 immigrants were in government custody on June 15, exceeding the current capacity of 41,000.
“These are the worst conditions I have seen in my 20-year career,” said Paul Chavez, litigation and advocacy director at Americans for Immigrant Justice in Florida, which represents detainees. “Conditions were never great, but this is horrendous.”
At least 10 immigrants have died in ICE custody in the six months since Jan. 1, including two at a facility in Miami, the Krome detention center, where detainees earlier this month formed a human “S.O.S.” sign in the yard. At least two of the deaths were suicides, in Arizona and Georgia. (An average of about seven deaths a year occurred in ICE custody during the four years of the Biden administration.)
Immigration detentions have soared since late May, when Stephen Miller, the White House aide overseeing immigration policy, set a goal of 3,000 arrests per day.
