ICE Detention Centers Are Killing People Through Medical Neglect—and No One’s Held Accountable

On December 15, 2025, 56-year-old Bulgarian immigrant Nenko Gantchev died at ICE’s North Lake detention center in Michigan after being found struggling to breathe on his cell floor. Despite pleas for medical help, staff reportedly ignored him until it was too late. ICE claims he died of natural causes, but no investigation details or medical care records have been made public. Gantchev had been fighting his detention in court, a fate shared by many who end up dead behind bars.

North Lake, run by the GEO Group, has been plagued with accusations of medical neglect since reopening in June 2025. Multiple emergency calls have gone unanswered, and a former detainee is suing after being denied antibiotics and emergency care, nearly dying of sepsis. Congressional representatives have expressed “deep concern,” toured the facility, and still have no answers about what happened to Gantchev.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Oudone Lothirath, a 57-year-old Laotian refugee with terminal cancer, was arrested in Minnesota and held in a tent detention center in Texas, missing critical chemotherapy sessions. ICE only released him after his caretaker presented a medical letter warning he would die without treatment. Lothirath’s health deteriorated rapidly, and he died in hospice care—his death hastened by ICE’s neglect.

Camp East Montana, another tent facility near Fort Bliss, Texas, has seen at least three detainee deaths, including a homicide. A recent ICE inspection uncovered rampant medical failures: detainees with possible tuberculosis were not quarantined or properly screened; medical grievances went unanswered for weeks; use-of-force incidents lacked any medical follow-up or documentation; and no protocols existed to address sexual abuse or assault. Despite these horrors, ICE rated the facility “Acceptable/Adequate.”

ICE’s response? They fired the original contractor but handed operations to another company without fixing the systemic problems. Meanwhile, ICE claims the facility meets “the highest detention standards,” a cruel joke considering the documented abuses.

The numbers are grim. Thirty-two detainees died in ICE custody in 2025—the deadliest year since 2004—and 2026 is on track to be worse. The detained population has surged by over 75 percent since Trump’s return, with funding now secured to hold more than 135,000 people in detention beds through 2029. Shockingly, detainees without criminal records have increased by more than 2,400 percent.

Most of the deaths involve people with preexisting medical conditions neglected behind bars. ICE’s detention centers have become death traps, where profit-driven contractors and an indifferent bureaucracy systematically deny basic medical care, leading to preventable suffering and death.

This is not just incompetence—it is a brutal policy choice that demands urgent accountability. We will keep tracking these abuses and pushing for transparency, because silence is complicity when lives are on the line.