Trump Expanded Detention 71%, His Department Cut the Watchdogs, and a Judge Found Unconstitutional Punishment

ICE Held 175 People in Rooms With No Beds

On July 1, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held at least 175 people in Manhattan holding rooms with no beds, no showers and no windows.¹ It kept the lights on overnight.¹ It held a detainee who tested positive for tuberculosis in a crowded room for six days.¹ After a trial, a federal judge found that ICE imposed unconstitutional conditions there to punish detainees and push them to leave the country.¹

President Donald Trump had ordered more immigration detention.² His Homeland Security Secretary had approved abolishing every General Schedule staff position in two offices charged with checking what happened inside.³ At least 38 people died in ICE custody in fiscal year 2026, more than in any earlier year of a published series that begins in fiscal 2004.⁴⁵⁶⁷ The count does not establish that Trump or the oversight cuts caused those deaths.⁷³

The accusation is the combination: the administration expanded custody while weakening the checks meant to protect the people it confined.⁸³⁹

A Judge Found the Conditions Were Punishment

The four holding rooms, on the tenth floor of 26 Federal Plaza, were built for stays of twelve hours or less, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan found.¹ Before summer 2025 ICE usually held fewer than ten people there at a time; that summer it often held more than 100.¹ A June 24 nationwide waiver extended the usual twelve-hour limit to 72 hours absent exceptional circumstances.¹ The judge found that daily arrests, not physical capacity, determined how many people ICE put inside.¹

Detainees had no sleeping mats.¹ For most of that period ICE provided two meals a day, twelve hours apart, and it barred lawyer visits.¹ The government offered declarations describing supplies and regular cleaning; the judge found them irreconcilable with detainees' accounts, which the government did not assert were false.¹

Opinion, Barco Mercado v. Mullin, No. 25-cv-6568 (LAK), ECF 186¹

The conditions of confinement to which ICE subjected immigration detainees at 26 Fed during the summer of 2025 were inhumane and unconstitutional.

His September 24, 2026 opinion held that the conditions violated the Fifth Amendment both through deliberate indifference and as punishment.¹ The finding is final and covers one building in the summer of 2025. It followed a one-day bench trial on declarations, depositions and more than 400 exhibits.¹¹⁰ The government did not dispute the claims concerning stays over twelve hours.¹¹⁰ Kaplan also found lasting psychological trauma and physical harm, and that some detainees decided to self-deport to escape continued confinement in those conditions.¹

ICE Broke Capacity Orders and Filed a False Sworn Count

Kaplan's orders, the first on August 12, 2025, required 50 square feet per person, clean sleeping mats and confidential lawyer calls.¹ The orders helped: the court found that ICE held far fewer people for far less time.¹ ICE still broke them. The court found at least eighty-four days from September 2025 to mid-March 2026 when a room exceeded its limit, beyond the two days the defendants admitted.¹ ICE admitted that confidential lawyer calls began only on February 27, 2026, after a contempt motion and more than six months after the first order.¹

Opinion, Barco Mercado v. Mullin, No. 25-cv-6568 (LAK), ECF 186¹

ICE’s disregard of this Court’s orders regarding capacity limits at 26 Fed has been persistent, egregious, and, at a minimum, reckless, if not willful.

Then came the sworn count. Supervisor Nancy Zanello signed an August 18, 2025 declaration under penalty of perjury stating that eight people were in custody, relying on an August 15 count described as current.¹ ICE's own records showed sixty when she signed, and that morning she had emailed that ICE was violating the order and holding 48.¹ The government called the error an accident of rapidly changing custody. The judge rejected that explanation and found that Zanello and the defendants intentionally concealed or recklessly disregarded the truth.¹ They had used the false declaration to argue that crowding was resolved and an injunction unnecessary.¹

Kaplan did not find perjury or contempt, sanction anyone or refer anyone for discipline; the contempt motion ended in a stipulation.¹ The October 2 amended permanent injunction capped the four rooms at 22 people in all.¹¹

In Baltimore, on March 6, 2026, Judge Julie R. Rubin issued a preliminary injunction over holding rooms, finding detainees likely to prove deprivation of sanitary, safe conditions and basic medical screening and care.¹² There too an ICE official had sworn that the daily population was under 30 people 100% of the time; Rubin found that untrue, without a finding about the official's intent, and the government withdrew the declaration.¹²

Trump Signed the Order and the Funding

Trump signed the order.² On January 20, 2025, he directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to build or contract for detention facilities and to ensure detention of people arrested for immigration violations, to the extent permitted by law.² On July 1, the day of the Manhattan count, he visited Alligator Alcatraz, a Florida detention site about to open, and said he would like to "see them in many States."¹³¹⁴ On July 4 he approved the law providing $45 billion for detention capacity; Congress gave the Secretary discretion over standards for the funded single-adult detention capacity, consistent with applicable law.¹⁵

ICE's detained population rose 71% between January 20, 2025 and July 30, 2026, to 67,180, reports the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's auditor.⁸

Congress Created the Offices; Noem Abolished Their Staff Positions

Congress required the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) civil rights office to investigate possible abuses and its independent immigration detention ombudsman to conduct unannounced inspections.¹⁶¹⁷ On March 20, 2025, Secretary Kristi Noem approved a reduction in force covering 147 General Schedule positions at the civil rights office and 117 at the detention ombudsman's office.³ The government admitted in court that she approved it and that the layoffs abolished every General Schedule position at both offices.³

DHS said publicly that the offices obstructed immigration enforcement and functioned as internal adversaries, the Associated Press (AP) and NPR reported.¹⁸¹⁹ In court, the department said Trump's workforce executive order initiated the process and Noem made the final decisions.³

The government defended the cuts as a reorganization. No statute fixed a staffing level, it said; contractors and detailed employees continued the work; and the ombudsman's office later inspected 22 facilities, the same number as the previous year.³ It disputed that earlier inspections were genuinely unannounced and said the offices had not closed.³ But it also admitted that the ombudsman's office made no inspections from March 21 through August 13, 2025, and that the inspections that followed were announced.³

In that same gap the office resolved, dismissed or otherwise closed no complaints, the government admitted. From January 20 through March 21 it had closed 2,057.³ Of 280 complaints the detention ombudsman's office received between March 21 and December 12, 2025, it opened fourteen investigations and referred fifteen complaints to other components, the government admitted.³ Other work went on. From March 21 through December 12, the civil rights office investigated 183 complaints and referred another 371.³ It also made 409 urgent medical referrals to other DHS components.³

The acting ombudsman testified that he devoted roughly five hours a week to the duties, and the government said another official, Ronald Sartini, performed the office's functions.³ For the civil rights office, which receives ICE's death reviews, the government said Sartini had reviewed about ten reports by his deposition and found no cause to investigate thus far.³⁴

The Ombudsman's Shutdown and a Narrower Death Review

NPR reported that Trump fired Noem and named Markwayne Mullin as her replacement in March 2026, and the Senate confirmed Mullin on March 23.²⁰²¹ The Manhattan permanent injunction came during his tenure.¹¹

On May 7, 2026, NPR reported that DHS confirmed the detention ombudsman's shutdown and had archived pages about the office.⁹ The department blamed the congressional funding lapse and the newly enacted DHS appropriations measure, which excluded some immigration-enforcement functions. NPR reported that the measure did not mandate the office's closure.⁹

On June 2, 2026, ICE replaced its death-notification and review directive with a version that omitted post-release deaths from its stated coverage.²²²³ The February 2025 directive had covered deaths within a reasonable time, no more than 30 days after release, when the director requested review.²³ The new directive kept procedures for deaths in custody.²²²³

Reason reported on October 1 that ICE had briefly published internal reports reviewing 33 detention deaths, then removed them; the reviews covered deaths from September 2019 through January 2026, across presidential administrations.²⁴ Of the 31 mortality reviews that reached a conclusion, 27 found care outside safe limits, Reason reported.²⁴ In Marie Ange Blaise's April 2025 death, Reason reported, the internal review found that staff failed to start CPR despite her lack of a pulse; ICE's public report said staff started CPR immediately after calling emergency services.²⁴²⁵

At Least 38 People Died in One Year

ICE's own table, as of October 10, 2026, lists 36 deaths for the fiscal year that ended September 30, compared with 24 the year before.⁴ The table omits two deaths that ICE announced separately.⁴⁵⁶ Carlos Josue Marchena-Marchena, 36, died September 18 at Winn Parish Medical Center after he was found unresponsive at Winnfield Correctional Center.⁵ Julian Curo-Churata, 47, died September 29 after hospitalization from Richwood detention.⁶ Those two bring the minimum to 38; the total remains provisional because the agency's table can lag its announcements.⁴⁵⁶ The highest earlier annual total in a JAMA research letter's fiscal 2004 to 2025 series was 28, in 2004.⁷

On October 9, The Banner reported that Curo-Churata's family lawyer was investigating credible information that Richwood guards ignored requests for medical care until too late.²⁶ ICE said he received proper care, was hospitalized after medical distress on September 28 and died the next morning; the cause was unknown pending an autopsy.⁶

DHS told NPR that a larger detained population explained more deaths.²⁷ JAMA's researchers measured deaths against time in custody instead, and the rate rose too: from 47.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years in fiscal 2025 to 88.9.⁷ The second figure annualizes the first 111 days of fiscal 2026; the two years' uncertainty intervals overlap, and the study did not adjust for detainees' illnesses or differences among facilities.⁷ The fiscal 2004 rate, 127.7, was higher.⁷ Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, analyzing 52 deaths in the first 500 days of Trump's second term, found that mortality had more than doubled since the term began and that population growth alone did not explain the increase.²⁸

A Homicide Ruling at a Camp That Opened Without Inspection

Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban man, died on January 3, 2026 at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas.²⁹³⁰ ICE's first announcement described medical distress and did not mention force. Its death report said he attempted self-harm and that staff used force before he became unresponsive.²⁹³⁰

The AP reported that the El Paso County autopsy found asphyxia from neck and torso compression and classified the death as homicide; NBC separately obtained the report through a records request and reported the same classification.³¹³² A homicide classification does not determine criminal guilt, and neither outlet reported a charge.³¹³² AP reported that the autopsy described witnesses seeing him become unresponsive while law enforcement physically restrained him, and that it made no mention of attempted suicide.³¹

DHS said he tried to take his own life and violently resisted guards attempting to help him, an account it amended as the anticipated homicide ruling became public, the AP reported.³¹³²

ICE had opened the camp in August 2025 without its required pre-occupancy inspection, GAO found in its June 9, 2026 audit; later oversight identified medical-service gaps, unsanitary conditions and a lost loaded firearm.³³³⁰

ICE replaced the contractor in April 2026; GAO said it was too early to assess whether the change would resolve performance problems. DHS and the Defense Department agreed with GAO's recommendations.³³ Separately, GAO's September audit found that, as of August 2026, the replacement contract still lacked cost-saving measures tied to occupancy and ICE continued paying for services it did not need.⁸

Congress Funded Detention; It Did Not Authorize Punishment

The strongest defense is that Congress funded detention, immigration law permits it, and the officials running facilities deserve discretion.¹⁵³⁴³⁵ In Demore v. Kim the Supreme Court upheld detention of a criminal noncitizen who conceded deportability for the limited period of removal proceedings; Bell v. Wolfish recognized that not every hardship amounts to punishment and accorded administrators wide-ranging deference.³⁴³⁵ But Bell also permits a court to infer unconstitutional punishment when conditions lack a reasonable relationship to a legitimate goal. Kaplan made that finding after trial.³⁵¹

The administration won a May 5 procedural ruling denying an Adelanto preliminary injunction without prejudice.³⁶ But Kaplan’s September opinion cites an August 12 ruling in that case among decisions finding conditions punitive and likely unconstitutional; the May ruling does not describe the later posture.¹

In constitutional damages suits, the Supreme Court held in Iqbal, an official's rank alone does not make them liable for a subordinate's misconduct.³⁷ That ruling does not set the impeachment standard.³⁷³⁸

The Charge Is Abuse of the Public Trust

Kaplan linked the Manhattan conditions to the administration’s self-deportation program, citing the White House fact sheet announcing Trump’s Project Homecoming. He found support for treating the harsh conditions as part of that program’s threatened enforcement and penalties in ICE’s self-deportation flyers inside the building.¹ That was a policy connection, not a finding that Trump personally ordered the particular conditions.¹

In her Baltimore preliminary ruling, Rubin cited the earlier Manhattan decision's account of Secretary Noem acknowledging that ICE chose a notoriously harsh state prison for immigrants charged with violent crimes partly to encourage self-deportation; her reasoning does not establish that Noem personally ordered the conditions in Manhattan or Baltimore.¹²³⁹

The Constitution requires impeachment and conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors to remove the President and other civil officers.³⁸ Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 65, described abuse or violation of public trust as impeachable: his interpretation, not binding law, with a warning that party strength could outweigh proof.⁴⁰

Trump ordered detention expanded and publicly backed more facilities like Florida's.²¹³ His Secretary approved abolishing General Schedule staff positions in statutory watchdog offices.³ A court found that ICE used unconstitutional confinement to punish people and induce self-deportation, persistently disregarded corrective orders and submitted a false sworn count.¹ Enlarging the government's custody power while weakening its safeguards, with unconstitutional punishment inside, is an abuse of the public trust. That is the charge.