22/12/2025
Reports of deaths in ICE custody are drawing renewed concern from members of Congress. Some reporting suggests in-custody deaths are at or near a multi-decade high, raising serious questions about medical care, conditions, and oversight inside immigration detention facilities.
This matters even more when you understand who runs many of these facilities.
Private prison contractors like GEO Group operate ICE detention centers — and GEO is currently trying to block lawsuits entirely by arguing it should receive immunity because it works for ICE. In other words, they’re not saying “we didn’t do this,” they’re saying “you shouldn’t be allowed to sue us at all.”
One of the key lawsuits involves civil immigration detainees who allege they were coerced into labor. That case goes straight to the heart of abolition work, because the 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery outright. It allows involuntary servitude only as punishment for a crime after conviction.
Immigration detention is civil, not criminal. Many detainees have not been convicted of anything. If people in civil custody are pressured into work under threat of punishment or loss of privileges, that exception clause does not apply — and that’s why this case matters.
GEO wants an immediate immunity shield to avoid having these issues examined in court. So far, that argument looks weak, but with the current Supreme Court, outcomes are never guaranteed.
What is guaranteed is this:
less accountability leads to worse conditions, and worse conditions in detention have already proven deadly.
That’s why we stay vigilant.
That’s why we keep calling this system what it is.
And that’s why abolition is not history — it’s now.
