For years ICE and America's Immigration System have tortured and discriminated against immigrants who only want a safe home. The U.S has the most detention centers in the world and they have been used as cruel punishments for immigrants. Immigrants are being dragged out of their homes and thrown into horrible, ICE-run prisons for reasons as small as a speeding ticket, running a red light, and not paying taxes that they cannot even afford in the first place due to low paying jobs (Siebers, JSTOR). Even if they are considered “American citizens,” they can still be deported for crimes as little as unpaid tickets. Still these small mistakes that happen to everyday citizens are considered crimes.

Former President Donald Trump believed that the U.S needed to have a more aggressive and restrictive immigration system (Migration Policy). Minor criminal acts, he believed, were harmful and belonged on a criminal record (Pewtrusts). In Trump's first year as president, he promised to deport millions of immigrants with criminal records (Pewtrusts). Even though Trump did not succeed in his expectations for the number of deportations, with the help of the White House, he created many serious problems for immigrants at the U.S-Mexico border, such as ending asylum at the border, building new barriers, reducing refugee resettlement, and completing many other inhumane actions(Migration Policy). One of the worst actions he took at the border was the separation of children from their families. Children were separated from their parents and put in cells with other children without basic hygiene such as showers. Many children of the ages 2-3 did not get to see their families at all, and most of them were extremely sick.

And there is more abuse too, a recent allegation of coerced sterilization of a woman was made against a detention center in Irwin County, Georgia where other crimes have also been reported (ACLU). Concerns rose that “doctors were targeting vulnerable women based on their race, poverty, and immigration status”(ACLU). Though this was only one form of  “reproductive injustice” displayed by ICE.  According to Freedom for Immigrants, an organization built to help immigrants in need, ICE has used detention centers as a racist and fascist way to mentally and physically harm immigrants as most of them are “subjected to medical neglect, sexual and physical assault, and many other human rights cases of abuse”(Freedom for Immigrants). Some detention centers have even profited off of the pain these people are feeling from the government. Many reports of violence and sexual abuse have been documented by immigration lawyers, though a large number of allegations have been buried by ICE and high authorities that do not want to attract bad press. For example, between 2010 and 2016, Freedom for Immigrants filed “14,700 complaints alleging sexual and physical abuse,” though only a very small fraction of these allegations were sought by the office of Inspector General(ProPublica). That is a very small number of people who had their cases looked into. Even when their cases are looked into, most of them are passed by and the detention officers continue to mistreat the detainees.

Many immigrants have also faced medical neglection, and have accepted deportation rather than viable immigration claims out of a desperate need for medical attention instead of being treated like Jose Segovia Benitez, a U.S Marine Corps Veteran who returned from Iraq after being diagnosed with depression, hearing loss, a brain injury, PTSD, and a heart condition. He underwent deficient cardiac treatment in Adelanto, California where he was put in solitary confinement, which was used as a torture method for behavior that was due to his mental health disability(Fraihat et al., v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al., Case No.: 19-cv-01546-JGB (C.D. Cal.).

The Aurora Detention Center (run by the private operator GEO) has faced many lawsuits from immigration lawyers to free medically-vulnerable detainees, end the transferring of detainees due to many COVID outbreaks, give punishments for not cleaning the detention center, and many more (Colorado Independent). A documentary called “The Facility'' was made to tell the stories of 5 cases of people who had family members or were put in the detention center (Salzman, Colorado Times Recorder). The documentary’s preview talks about a few of the many inhumane actions that the ICE staff undertook, such as putting them in restraints, tying them down, throwing them in solitary, hitting them, and abusing them(Salzman, Colorado Times Recorder). The Director of the film, Jeremy Flood, describes ICE as “a machine that turns human bodies into profit at the expense of people of color.” Meaning that as more people enter the detention center, the private operator makes more money to build on the detention center and other detention centers around America (Salzman, Colorado Times Recorder). The private operator of the Aurora Detention Center(GEO) is one of the largest private prison contractors in the world, this is mainly because it gains its money from ICE based on how well kept the facility and the prisoners are.