Is ICE endangering the health of the country?

Highlighted Stories

Editor's Note

In the August 4 Weekly Update, we noted that an ICE procurement document asserted that state and local laws do not apply to the operation of its detention facilities. In this week's three highlighted articles, we see state and local health authorities continuing to challenge that assertion and seeking access to ICE detention facilities and information about the people held within them.

The New York Times article reports on three deaths at the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey, where local health inspectors have not been permitted to enter the facility operated by the GEO Group. In Massachusetts, according to WBUR, a federal judge ordered the Plymouth County Sheriff to turn over records concerning ICE detainees to the ACLU. In his opinion, Judge Budreau takes a very different view from the one ICE expressed in its procurement document, emphasizing the state's authority to protect the health and safety of its population, an authority that cannot simply be displaced by federal regulation.

Now let's turn to the third highlighted article. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has issued an order requiring GEO Group to allow health authorities to investigate the possible spread of tuberculosis at its immigrant detention center in Aurora. ICE maintains that its facilities follow CDC guidelines. But those very guidelines state that correctional facilities should report suspected and confirmed cases of TB disease to their local or state TB programs.

GEO Group, meanwhile, is attempting to block enforcement of a new Colorado law requiring regular health and safety inspections of immigrant detention facilities, arguing that it exceeds the state's authority and violates the Supremacy and Contracts Clauses of the U.S. Constitution. That may seem like an unusual position for a private company to take against the laws of a state, but perhaps it should not surprise us. Earlier this year, GEO Group argued in another case that it was entitled to sovereign immunity because it was acting as a government contractor. The Supreme Court declined to accept that argument.

What is most troubling about efforts by ICE and its contractors to prevent state and local health authorities from inspecting detention facilities is the apparent assumption that what happens inside those facilities remains inside them. Communicable diseases do not recognize the walls of a detention center. Tuberculosis makes particularly clear why the health of people inside a detention facility is also a matter of public health outside it. So to repeat the subject of this Weekly Update: Is ICE endangering the health of the country?

The deaths of three Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in less than eight months have raised urgent questions about the medical services provided at Delaney Hall and at other detention centers, with immigrants and local officials describing haphazard health care. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said that detainees receive good medical care. Geo Group, the private company that operates Delaney, did not respond to requests for comment for this article. The New Jersey Department of Health had tried to inspect the detention center’s infection-control protocols and practices, but was turned away in June. New Jersey’s attorney general sued to force the center to allow state health inspectors inside. The suit is pending.

The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office must hand over hundreds of anonymized health records of immigrant detainees following a Massachusetts court ruling. Judge James Budreau issued the order, a month after attorneys for the sheriff and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sparred in Suffolk County Superior Court. Judge Burdeau stated: “The state maintains (its) right to reasonably police and ensure the health and safety of its population and such right is not usurped by the federal regulation at issue here.”

Colorado’s health department issued a public health order to GEO Group in a push to allow health authorities to investigate the possible spread of tuberculosis at an immigrant detention center in Aurora. TB is curable, but can be lethal if untreated. The health department’s “priority is protecting everyone connected to the facility, including detained people, employees, contractors, visitors, and the broader community,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Follow Ups

Arizona

Editor's Comment: The Arizona receivership story continues. As we noted last week, Judge Roslyn Silver was not persuaded by the Department of Corrections or the governor's office to delay the receiver's takeover of healthcare in the state's prison system. Now, in another twist in this long-running effort to improve prison healthcare, the state has gone to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to pause the appointment of receiver Annette Chambers-Smith. The state has requested a ruling by September 2. Judge Silver's July order formally appointed Chambers-Smith but provided that the receivership would take effect 21 days after resolution of a motion to stay.

What to make of all this? It bears repeating what we wrote on August 4: "[It shows] just how difficult it can be to implement meaningful change through the courts, especially when there is resistance from both the DOC and state officials."

Arizona officials waited until the final day allowed to ask a federal appeals court to stop a court-ordered takeover of the state’s prison health care system. The state filed an emergency motion Aug. 12 asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the appointment of Annette Chambers-Smith, the former Ohio prisons director, to the position. As a court-appointed receiver, Chambers-Smith would manage medical and mental health care in Arizona prisons. The state asked the appeals court to rule by Sept. 2. The filing came exactly seven days after U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver rejected the state’s first request for a stay. Silver gave Arizona an additional seven days to seek the same relief from the appeals court, making Aug. 12 the deadline. The filing means the receivership will not begin Aug. 13 as it would have if the state did not file a stay.

Extreme Heat

Rio Scharf, staff attorney at UC Berkeley’s Criminal Law and Justice Center explains the three major legal arguments attorneys have used to assert that extreme heat constitutes a civil rights violation. First is the Eighth Amendment, which argues that the impact of extreme heat — effectively cooking people to death — constitutes cruel or unusual punishment. Second, in the case of local jails and ICE detention centers, lawyers have also presented due process claims under the Fifth and 14th amendments, arguing that people who haven’t been found guilty of anything shouldn’t be punished at all — which includes forcing them to bake in the heat (or freeze in the cold) with no relief. Finally, there have also been lawsuits alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which focuses on the ways extreme heat can be especially harmful to people with pre-existing disabilities.

ICE

The Trump administration has not officially acknowledged force-feeding anyone in immigration jails. But an investigation by the Guardian found that since January 2025, the administration used court orders in plans to subject at least 10 hunger strikers in ICE detention to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding.

State Roundup

California

California prison officials have failed to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by staff for years, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a new report. The Justice Department began investigating the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino nearly two years ago after hundreds of incarcerated women filed legal claims alleging sexual exploitation by staff and an officer was arrested for sexually abusing at least 22 women.

Illinois

Gary Sams could hardly breathe. He had begun experiencing early symptoms of rapidly progressing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive and fatal neurological disease, in April 2024. By June 2025, ALS had robbed him of his ability to walk or use his hands. Now it was suffocating him. Sams’s hospitalization came after over a year-long battle to receive medical attention in IDOC, which has long been scrutinized for providing inadequate healthcare. Stories of medical neglect and malpractice fill the pages of hundreds of lawsuits. In 2022, Illinois became one of the last states to adopt a medical release law—the Joe Coleman Act—which allows certain incarcerated people who are terminally ill or medically incapacitated to be medically released. After spending six months in a hospital, unable to return to Graham Correctional Center as the institution could not support his ventilator needs, Sams became one of only 28 individuals to receive medical release in 2025.

Texas

University Medical Center is asking Lubbock County commissioners to reevaluate how inmate health care is funded, as costs tied to the Lubbock County Detention Center continue to rise. UMC CEO Mark Funderburk presented the hospital’s financial outlook to commissioners during their regular meeting on Monday, proposing the county adopt a no-new-revenue tax rate for the hospital district, while calling for a fresh look at how correctional health care costs are shared. Funderburk said indigent care costs UMC roughly $100 million per year, while the hospital’s tax base provides only about $36 million to cover it. Of that $36 million, 28 percent is currently going toward care for inmates at the Lubbock County Detention Center — nearly one-third of the hospital’s total unfunded burden.

Although the state must provide treatment to defendants deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, a chronic shortage of beds at state-run psychiatric hospitals, also called state hospitals, have forced defendants to wait up to two years for care. Last month, U.S. District Judge David Ezra ordered the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to cut wait times to 21 days over the next four years, but attorneys for the state have since appealed the ruling.

Wisconsin

In November, the DOC released a report with recommendations for change to the prison system as part of its partnership with the consulting firm Falcon Correctional and Community Services, Inc. One recommendation involves keeping incarcerated people with a serious mental illness from ending up in restrictive housing — also known as solitary confinement. The DOC reports that it is facing hurdles to implementing this proposal and some of the other recommendations for change to the prison system’s response to mental illness.

Correctional Healthcare Vendors

PrimeCare Medical

Monroe County (NY) renewed its contract with PrimeCare Medical Inc. to provide medical services at the Monroe County Jail in August 2026, shortly after a state report identified the 2023 death of an inmate under PrimeCare's care as preventable and recommended a review of the company's fitness to continue. This renewal occurred before any formal evaluation or oversight review was conducted, raising important considerations for procurement professionals regarding contract management, vendor accountability, and risk mitigation in correctional healthcare services.