ICE Detention Centers Meet the Definition of Concentration Camps, New Research Warns

The phrase "concentration camp" carries the weight of some of history's darkest atrocities, most notoriously the Nazi Holocaust. But a recent peer-reviewed study by international relations scholars reveals that the concept extends beyond this singular historical moment. Their research identifies 150 systems of camps worldwide since 1896 that share core features: targeted civilian imprisonment, enclosed and controlled spaces, operation outside legal detention standards, and routine abuse and neglect.

Among these, the study highlights the network of more than 240 active ICE detention facilities across the United States as meeting the criteria for concentration camps. Migrants held in these camps face indefinite confinement without due process, often forced to choose between immediate deportation or continued detention. Since the Trump administration’s second term, over 34,000 habeas corpus petitions have been filed challenging this unconstitutional detention without trial.

This academic framing is not an attempt to sensationalize but to ground the ongoing crisis in immigration enforcement within a broader historical and global context of repression. The study draws parallels from the Spanish military’s brutal reconcentrado camps in 1890s Cuba, the British detention of Boers and indigenous people during the South African War, Nazi Germany’s genocidal camp system, and China’s mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Key to the definition is that these camps operate irregularly—outside the protections afforded by prison or refugee camp regulations—and subject detainees to squalid conditions and multiple forms of abuse, including overcrowding, lack of medical care, psychological and physical violence, and deprivation of basic needs.

By applying this rigorous framework to ICE detention centers, the study challenges the sanitized language often used to describe U.S. immigration enforcement and demands accountability for practices that echo historical systems of ethnic cleansing and political repression.

In a moment when democracy and human rights are under assault, recognizing ICE detention as part of a concentration camp system is a clarion call to activists, policymakers, and the public. It underscores the urgent need to dismantle a detention regime that perpetuates abuse and undermines the promise of justice and dignity for all.