Here's how the system to report problems in ICE detention has failed immigrants

Inside ICE detention's broken grievance system Critics say it is the reason why more detainees are risking their lives to protest inhumane conditions and legal rights violations, in the form of widespread hunger strikes.

Key points

• The findings were published in a 2024 study called Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention.
• Instead, the office referred NPR to the 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards.
• Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, NJ on June 3, 2026.
• Another office whose budget has been slashed is the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Brundage observed.
• Protesters stand outside Delaney Hall detention center on June 3, 2026.

Here's how the system to report challenges in ICE detention has failed immigrants.

Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, NJ on June 3, 2026. An NPR review has discovered that the grievance system in immigration detention, originally designed as a way to report violations of detention standards, is now barely operational. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

One of the last remaining checks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private-prison contractors running immigration detention centers has all but collapsed, leaving thousands of individuals trapped in a system with almost non-existent oversight.

Notably, the grievance system in immigration detention is designed to offer a safe channel to report violations of detention standards and seek redress, without fear of retaliation. It's often the only recourse for individuals to submit complaints concerning detention problems, including mistreatment, unsanitary conditions, medical neglect, and sexual assault. But an NPR review has discovered the system – which in the best of times was a complex patchwork – barely operates and even at times backfires for those using it. It is one of the few remaining safeguards for immigrants in federal custody after the Trump administration effectively dismantled other oversight offices.

Detainees and their families tell NPR that in the particularly worst cases the absence of transparency and accountability, and the subsequent failure to adhere to mandated grievance guidelines is one of the leading factors for the record number of deaths in detention – at least 53 since the start of President Trump's second term. Private prisons announce $1.4 billion in revenue as immigration detentions climb.

Critics say it is the reason why more detainees are risking their lives to protest inhumane conditions and legal rights violations, in the form of widespread hunger strikes.

Notably, the Department of Homeland Security declined to answer specific questions regarding how it handles detainees' grievance claims, how DHS or private contractor employees are trained, what steps it takes to ensure private contractors – the largest being CoreCivic and The GEO Group – adhere to guidelines, or whether all detention facilities have a mandatory grievance committee. Instead, the office referred NPR to the 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards. It outlines how the system is intended to work.

That system didn't work for D.E. This person has had a brain tumor growing in his head for the last 12 years.

He was supposed to start chemotherapy the week he was picked up by ICE just a couple blocks from his home.

Notably, the first seizure in detention was terrifying, but the second was the worst.

It was around 2 a.m. And D.E., one of more than a thousand detainees in the California City Detention Center, was lying on the lower bunk of his small cell. The CoreCivic guard who normally brought his nightly dose of Keppra, the medication he's relied on twice a day for years to keep seizures at bay, was more than five hours late, and it wasn't the first time. He'd had the first seizure just a couple of weeks earlier and the telltale signs of an oncoming convulsion were in full effect: A relentless throbbing in his brain behind the three inch scar above his left ear. The blurred vision. For context, the dizziness.

D.E., who requested NPR employ his initials only, stands near the location two blocks from his home, in which he was violently arrested by ICE office-holders without a warrant, in Long Branch, NJ. D.E., 44, who has had a brain tumor growing in his head for years, was denied medication by ICE officers, and consequently, suffered from a number of seizures. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

"I could feel it coming and I didn't want to hurt myself so I jammed my arm between the metal bed frame and the wall to lock myself in place, " D.E., a Mexican national who requested NPR only employ his initials as he fears administration retaliation, remarked in Spanish. Trapping his arm was the best precaution he could come up with to keep himself from accidentally falling face first into the shared toilet that was just inches from his bed, he remarked. "It's what I was most afraid of because I could have drowned."

Recalling that night, D.E. Described the episode as a sustained haze of torture. The next morning, he tried to document what he could remember in a medical grievance that has been reviewed by NPR.

In practice, the grievance system should act as an internal accountability mechanism for both federally-run and contracted detention facilities; the guidelines establish mandatory review and adjudication timeframes.

Notably, the grievance paperwork D.E. Filled out after he was denied medication during ICE detention. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

With limited space on the paper form, D.E. Was as specific as he could be. "Hello. I am writing this letter to the Medical Services Department regarding a complaint regarding my medical condition, " he wrote on March 6. "It is a particularly aggressive problem involving a brain tumor that causes headaches and has triggered epileptic episodes lasting up to four hours. As my treatment was interrupted when I was detained by ICE on January 19.", I am requesting that you provide me with a doctor specializing in radiation and chemotherapy.

Lawmakers, immigration attorneys, advocates, and detainees report that experiences like D.E.'s are ubiquitous throughout the nation's detention centers, reflecting a broken grievance process.

Trying to enforce the rules of the grievance system has always been challenging, Chris Brundage, the former deputy of the now closed Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman informed NPR.

That's partly since it's not one single set of standards that all operators must follow, Brundage stated. "It's a patchwork system that has never worked as intended, " he remarked, explaining that there are at least three different sets of detention standards that operators are working under, depending on when they signed their contracts. (Some operators are after guidelines established in 2011. Others, an updated version from 2016, and those with new contracts are after 2019 standards.).

D.E.'s documentation of medicine taken, his seizures, and medical visits during his three months in detention. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

Over the last two years those challenges have been significantly exacerbated by the evisceration of almost all immigration detention oversight offices by the second Trump administration, he noted.

For context, the Office of Detention Oversight, created by Congress so as to conduct internal inspections and the Immigration Detention Ombudsman's office tasked with investigating detainee deaths and other problems have had their budgets gutted and suffered massive layoffs. Both agencies sit within DHS. In the case of the Ombudsman's office, one of the only places that detainees could turn to to challenge a grievance denial outside of the immediate detention facility, it was fully shuttered in May.

Another office whose budget has been slashed is the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Brundage observed. In 2025 the administration slashed the CRCL staff from roughly 150 employees down to just a handful, effectively halting operations. The Administration Accountability Project noted more than 500 active civil rights and detention-abuse complaints – including allegations of medical neglect, sexual abuse, and dangerous conditions in immigration detention – were frozen or left uninvestigated.

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At the time, the Trump administration remarked cutting hundreds of staff positions at the congressionally mandated offices was necessary to save capital and since DHS maintained they were "internal adversaries that slow down operations."

"I think what happened when these offices were effectively gutted and shut down, you lost that. Legitimacy. And legitimacy means that they're after the laws, regulations. But what happens if you don't have transparency into the process and you don't have accountability? Without those two things, that legitimacy erodes, " Brundage remarked.

As neither ICE nor any of the private prison firms contracted by DHS are required to disclose that data to any review body, even before the closures it has been virtually impossible for lawmakers or inspectors to know how plenty of grievances are filed at any given detention center each year. Additionally, even internally detention facility operators are not required to track data on how numerous grievance complaints are deemed to be founded, how the matter was resolved, or if it was challenged, whether the initial rejection was overturned.

Lawmakers and immigrant rights activists say that without such mandates, they are unable to decipher any patterns that could shed light on systemic challenges, either at a single facility or throughout the entire system. Some suggest it is a deliberate ploy to keep the public in the dark regarding conditions on the inside of the nation's fortress-like detention centers.

Protesters stand outside Delaney Hall detention center on June 3, 2026. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

In practice, the ACLU of Northern California partnered with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice to document the daily conditions of life in California immigration detention by tracking formal grievances during the Biden administration. The findings were published in a 2024 study called Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention. The organization obtained grievances from detainees and their families, and Freedom of Information Act requests from the state's six detention centers. It are all run by The GEO Group, CoreCivic, and Management & Training Corp. (Two new facilities, additionally run by private contractors, have been went on since then.).

In all, the study reviewed 485 grievance complaints, concluding that the absence of accountability and transparency keeps conditions of detention, the grievances filed, and their outcome hidden from public scrutiny. An analysis of the collected grievances made public that complaints concerning the staff and their conduct, including facility management and bullying by staff, were the most common reason for grievances, with 179 documented allegations. Poor living conditions, including contaminated food, sleep deprivation, exposure to toxic mold and access to legal counsel, were the second most common reasons, with 141 filed complaints. And, 94, roughly 20%, were medical grievances related to insufficient medical care and denial of medications.

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Based on the data, 71% of the 485 grievances were deemed as unfounded or rejected by detention center authorities. Almost 21% were either closed, undecided, or unknown. Only 8% of the total grievances discovered in favor of detained residents. According to detention standards, authorities are required to provide, in writing, a reason for a rejection of a complaint and detainees can appeal an unfounded determination up to two times. Previously, the matter could be escalated up to the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Ryan Gustin, senior director of public affairs at CoreCivic. It owns or operates 12 detention centers nationwide, remarked its facilities are closely monitored by ICE and regularly undergo reviews and audits.

Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, NJ, where D.E. Was held initially before being transferred to two other facilities. Lianne Milton for NPR hide caption.

"We have a robust grievance process available to all detainees at each of our ICE-contracted facilities that provides multiple safe and discrete avenues for concerns to be raised, including toll-free telephone numbers, " Gustin informed NPR. He continued that most detainee worries are processed through ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations' Detention, Removals and Information Line.

It is unclear if complaints created to one of the hotline numbers or those processed through ICE's ERO removals and information line are treated in the same way as a formal grievance, that is, whether it is documented and went on to a detainee's file, and if detention center authorities are required to abide by the same response timelines as a written complaint. CoreCivic referred all requests for clarification to DHS which did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Mariel Villareal, a senior attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, informed NPR that numerous of the denials she has reviewed rarely offer any meaningful explanation for the rejection. "It'll just be a few generic words, " she remarked. In other instances, there is no written record of the denial on the submitted complaint. (This is what happened in all four of D.E.'s grievances, filed regarding two years after the study at California City.).

Taken together, the developments around here' s how the system to report problems in ICE detention has failed point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.