This is transcript of WUWM's Status Pending podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Jimmy Gutierrez: A quick head’s up before we get started: we’re talking about detention centers today, which is a tough topic. And we will have mentions of torture, sexual abuse and self-harm. So if this is not for you, we completely understand, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
This is Status Pending, I’m Jimmy Gutierrez.
We're in the middle of our deep dive into ICE, and we’re learning more about the agency and what’s happening with it around the nation. Last time, we talked about the people doing the job — who ICE is hiring, how they’re being trained, all of this before they’re on the streets carrying out the Trump administration's mandates.
Today, we’re looking into where people go once they’ve been detained — a topic that’s been covered seemingly only after tragedy hits. And there’s been a lot of that.
What makes reporting on detention centers so difficult — just like finding out who ICE is hiring — is that the federal government has, for the most part, not shared what’s going on. And it’s not just difficult for journalists to learn more; it’s hard for the states where facilities are located to learn more about what’s happening in these facilities. So today, we’re talking with two reporters who’ve been digging.
We’re going to learn about the different types of facilities DHS has opened — and why the agency keeps having to change strategies. But first, we’re gonna go deep into one detention center that’s come to epitomize all that’s gone wrong in these places, and why accountability is so elusive.
ProPublica reporter on conditions at El Paso detention center
Perla Trevizo: My name is Perla Trevizo. I’m a reporter with ProPublica, and I'm part of the ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigative unit.
Jimmy Gutierrez: Perla, you have been reporting on immigration for over 15 years. So I have to ask: how is what we're seeing, hearing and reporting on what's happening in detention centers changed over time?
PT: I mean, in some ways, it seems to be the same story repeating itself, right? I think even before me, there's been reporters who have documented medical neglect or poor conditions inside detention centers. I think what's different, what we're seeing today is, one, the number of people inside detention has really grown and, two, the type of people who are being detained, right? I think for most of the time that I have been covering this, a lot of the people who ended up in detention were people who recently crossed the border.
And I think what we're seeing under the second Trump administration is this shift to what we call "interior enforcement." So you're getting a lot of people who have been in the U.S., sometimes for many years. You're sometimes getting older people, or people with chronic illnesses. And so I think that the demographics, the composition of people inside some of these detention centers has shifted, which has exacerbated the problems that we've all been reporting on for years now.
Camp East Montana
JG: One of those centers that you've reported on is Camp East Montana. This is inside of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Immigrants are being housed in, largely, these tent-type structures that are housing blocks of people. I'm not sure if that's still the case. What should people know about what's happening at Camp East Montana?
PT: Camp East Montana, as you said, sits on military land. And as you mentioned, there are these large white tents, roughly the size of two football fields, in the middle of the desert. And we as reporters do not have access to inside the facilities, but the descriptions have come from testimony of both detainees and people who visit.
And it was this place that was supposed to just hold people for about two weeks. And the idea was that they would come close to the border, there's an airport, and they’d send them back home as soon as possible. But what we start seeing is that people were being kept there for months at times, and are still being kept there for months at times. But it was never equipped to hold people for that period of time.
So it didn't have the necessary medical facilities. Like, it's not a fixed structure, right? Detainees would tell us that, when it was windy, El Paso sits in the middle of the desert, so dust and sand would permeate, and their beds would be covered with that. You know, they would have sewer overflowing the bathrooms. There's no separate cafeteria. So from the very beginning, it was starting to have issues in terms of the time people were spending there, and the conditions inside the facility.
The avoidable death of Geraldo Lunas Campos
JG: And I think what we learn from your reporting, we learned who is detained, what they're being detained for. And I think the person whose story really tells that is Geraldo Lunas Campos. And this is a man who's struggling with mental health care that he needs, which he's entitled to. Can you tell us a little bit about him and his experience at Camp Montana?
PT: You know, I started reporting on the facility shortly after it opened. And months after it opened, people started dying. It started in December, and then there were two more deaths in January. And at that time, that was making it the deadliest facility in the country. And one of those deaths is Geraldo, as you mentioned. So he was a 55-year-old Cuban man. His death was greatly covered because it was actually ruled a homicide by the El Paso County medical examiner. I started looking into his death, and we were able to review an extended medical examiner report that included a lot of the medical notes.
JG: And when you say extended, I mean we're talking over 300 pages.
PT: Over 300 pages, yes, which had not been reported on before, because his case is under investigation. And so this 300-page report, for the first time, provided very detailed notes of the times that he had actually asked for his medication. As you said, this was a person who had known mental health illnesses.
We learned that he had been previously hospitalized in New York for his mental health illnesses. And yet, when he arrived at Camp Montana, one of the main — and it seems continuous — issues was the lack of getting the proper medication that he needed to deal with his depression, to deal with his anxiety. And so he starts having altercations with the security forces.
And this is a man who, before he died, he had previously tried to commit suicide. And so we asked two medical professionals who have done a lot of research on deaths and medical issues inside facilities to review this report. I put together a timeline and had them review it. And, you know, one of them said that it showed systemic neglect. It was clear that they were not equipped to handle his condition.
911 calls from Camp Montana
JG: These are not suitable places for people with these types of conditions that need extensive treatment, which is reported in a couple places. You know, you have a GAO report that just came out that kind of documented how we have millions of dollars wasted in these detention centers. The ACLU came out with a report documenting detainee abuse. They're also now suing the federal government.
In some of their reports, they have conditions and treatment that sounds very close to torture, including sexual abuse. You also personally had talked to people from DHS, that couldn't disclose publicly or on the record because of NDAs.
But also, thinking about some of the really impressive reporting that you and your team did, is that you requested 911 calls from inside the facility — which I'm guessing you had pored over hundreds of hours of these kind of calls. What did you hear in those calls, from the calls that were either leaving or entering the facility? And what did you learn more about what was happening inside?
PT: What we start seeing from the calls from the very beginning is that, within weeks after the detention center opened, there was a first call of someone trying to harm themselves. And that just kept going on throughout the year or so since its operation.
So one of the biggest things was people trying to hurt themselves. People were found either with a bed sheet or something else wrapped around their neck. One of the last calls in terms of someone trying to harm themselves was they had pills in their sock that they were using. But then it showed kind of the bigger shortcomings, and I think it all compounds itself. Nothing is in a silo or nothing is alone, but it’s how it all comes together.
And I think the conditions at the detention center were also leading to more people to be desperate to the point of trying to harm themselves. Even staffers were saying they didn't have the right equipment, or the tools, or what they needed to care for the detainees.
There's a call where they’re like, “We have someone who needs an EKG, and we don't have paper.” There's another call saying, “This person's oxygen saturation is running low, and we don't have oxygen for them.” And there was this idea that people in the facility did not care. But on the other hand, you did hear about, as I mentioned, nurses just lamenting how little they could do for their [patients]. But I think the mental health aspect was the one thing that stood out from the beginning and that remained consistent throughout all of my requests for these calls.
The emotional toll of reporting on ICE detention
JG: It's tough to hear that. It's tough to hear these calls. I think this is like a personal question that I have. But you're sitting with all of this, right? And you're reporting on this, and you've been reporting on this for such a long time. How are you processing this? How do you take a breath for yourself to sit with how heavy these stories are? Because the reporting is so important, but you know, we also need the reporters to be in a condition where they’re OK enough to tell the stories.
PT: Yeah. I mean, I don't think we do that enough, right? I think compartmentalizing is a big part of it. I think that the hardest part so far has been, even more than hearing the 911 calls themselves, getting all the emails and calls from relatives who have loved ones in detention who are desperate to get them out. Because, obviously, our role as a reporter is not to get someone out of detention or intervene in any way, but it’s to report what's going on and report the facts.
And you feel that there's so little that you can do and that it's your job to do, but nonetheless, you feel this way. We're not lawyers. We're not advocates. We're not politicians. We're not policymakers. And so I think our role is so narrow, in some ways, but yet we're absorbing all this information and we start carrying it inside.
So I think that has been the hardest part, right? What do you do with all this information, beyond doing what I have done here? Put out the information, try to explain what has happened, and show the bigger systemic failures that are leading to this, and hopefully provide the information that people need to make their own decisions and change a system that is very visibly not working right now.
Response from DHS
JG: Just looking at your reporting, looking at your team's reporting, Texas Tribune's reporting, the federal government is not building these types of facilities any more on military bases, that are not set up for people with complex needs. But Camp East Montana is still open, even after it was once one of the deadliest detention facilities in the nation. I am curious what DHS has said to you, and what their response has been to your reporting, and the stories of their detainees.
PT: Yeah. I mean, they keep saying that, for a lot of the detainees, this is the best medical care they've gotten in their lives — that they abide by all standards, that they follow the processes. But I think what our reporting on Geraldo showed in the 911 calls is that it's coming from inside them, that it’s their own records that are showing the failures.
And since then, there's been reporting also by other outlets that after someone dies, they're supposed to do internal reviews about what happened. Because there's been 56 people who have died so far under the second Trump administration. And these mortality reviews showed exactly that, right? It showed staff that had mismanaged medication, skipped physical exams, ignored lab orders, delayed treatment — all the things that we kept hearing from detainees, from lawyers, from advocates and from the government. And yet, the response from the administration thus far has been, you know, “We are following guidelines. We’re following protocol.”
But as you said, Camp East Montana, however, remains open. They did switch the contractor, but the contractor who deals with the medical side of things remains the same. And I've been told by people who have access to the facility that, even though maybe the t-shirt has a different logo or it's a different color, the people who work there by and large remain the same.
From 'plan A' to 'plan B'
JG: A lot of Perla’s reporting looked at Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss. This was early into Trump’s second term, at a time when this was DHS’s strategy: build detention centers on military bases. In theory, the idea was that it would be cheaper. You had the land.
But obviously, there were some huge shortcomings. This whole strategy was called “plan A.” And it was initially how the agency thought they would be able to get to their goal of 100,000 detention beds.
That goal was set at the beginning of 2025. Almost two years later, the goal still hasn’t been met. According to the latest DHS report, they’re at about 70,000 beds.
A big reason for the shortfall is because people like Perla have reported on this issue. Local communities have rallied against these centers. And even some legislation, at least at the state level, is pushing back.
Time Magazine reporter's findings on privately-owned detention centers
Jimmy Gutierrez: So, because of all this, DHS and ICE have pivoted to plan B. I talked to Philip Wang, an immigration reporter for Time Magazine about this plan and what we should know.
Philip Wang: So the plan B that the DHS or ICE developed was purchasing giant warehouses and turning them into detention centers. The idea was that the large commercial spaces can be retrofitted, as they call it, into giant hotel rooms. And that in itself came with so many problems, the biggest one being that commercial warehouses simply don't have the infrastructure to be housing hundreds, if not thousands, of people — even for a short period of time.
Something like sewage systems, medical facilities, electricity capacity just don't get built overnight. And from a lot of homeowners' perspective — and this is not even a partisan issue — in a lot of Republican communities, people feel like having a detention facility next to their property could bring down the overall community value. So after being met with many challenges, ICE essentially abandoned plan B and is now moving to a newer plan.
'Plan C'
JG: So plan A didn't work, although it sounds like we still have plan A facilities. With plan B, we pivot. And now, we’re on plan C — which brings some familiar names that people may remember when it comes to detention, and detention facilities run by the U.S. government.
PW: Correct. plan C, which is still ongoing, was to purchase existing facilities from private prison contractors that previously leased these facilities to local governments as local jails and prisons. But there is a problem, even for some of the largest contractors out there. And that is that a lot of these private prisons don't have a lot of vacant facilities waiting to be purchased. In fact, even the best contractor out there, it takes them about 12 to 14 months to build a brick-and-mortar prison that is up to par to ICE detention standards.
I knew this because I spoke to an ICE official who was overseeing these detention facilities and what kind of standard that needs to be enforced. So it has been a challenge for some of the largest contractors in the country to quickly shore up all these inventories and meet where ICE wants them to be.
Why ICE shuttles detainees to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi
JG: The other thing, I think, that makes all of this incredibly complicated is that we're seeing more arrests from ICE than ever before. You know, there's been the standing mandate of 2,000 arrests per day, which, if you extrapolate that out, that’s 60,000 people per month.
And, you know, you had mentioned how many beds were available, even up to a couple of months ago, from Tom Homan. Thinking about just the math of how many people they're looking to detain, to how many beds they have available, where are they possibly putting people? Because the capacity isn't there.
PW: Yeah. And that's a very good point. I think one thing I want people to understand is that, although there are 212 active ICE detention facilities across the country, a lot of the immigrants who are taken into ICE custody don't just stay in one particular facility. In fact, they are being flown to other facilities across the country almost every day.
And I talked to a lot of activists who are monitoring these — what we call “shuttle flights.” And generally speaking, there are reasons that ICE claims as to why this is happening, and that it’s because of limited bed spaces. But activists and lawyers have also told me that the reason that some of the immigrants get shipped to different states, states like Texas and Louisiana, was because of the fact that it is easier to keep immigrants detained while their habeas lawsuits are ongoing.
Different states have different standards, in terms of how the immigration courts are being run. And in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi, these states have the most stringent standard for for immigrants to get out of the detention system — basically ship people to a jurisdiction where it’s easier for ICE to exert control.
What companies run private ICE detention centers?
JG: We have reported a little bit on even our local immigration attorneys who, just overnight, their clients will just disappear from the facilities that they were at. I'm sure you've heard similar stories. And it feels like a lot of this is trying to counter the habeas petitions that people may have, or habeas claims that people may have.
Can we talk about the 212 facilities that you had mentioned? Because I want to get into who is operating these facilities, because I think a lot of us may imagine that it is the government that is overseeing these. You know, you talk about plan A on military bases, and then you have this oversight and maybe the idea that it doesn't cost as much. But I think folks may be surprised to learn that a lot of the largest contracts to operate these centers are going to privately-owned companies, very much like the prison system.
PW: You're absolutely right. There are about 90% of ICE private detention centers that are run by privately-owned companies. Two of the biggest ones, GEO Group and CoreCivic, have both posted a combination of more than $1.4 billion of profit this past quarter. Both of these companies are publicly listed and traded, and have been running private detention facilities for ICE for a very, very long time.
JG: $1.4 billion this past quarter?
PW: Yeah. It's a very fascinating number. During their earnings calls, both of the CEOs for the company very much praised the current Trump administration for its policies, because it's a great political climate for them to build, lease and sell more private prisons. Generally speaking, these facilities have a capacity that can hold about 100 people to up to 3,000 people.
Each of these facilities, based on ICE’s own detention standards, should be gender segregated and should be staffed with medical professionals. And they should also be providing meals regularly to immigrant detainees. And each of these facilities should also have an ICE official overseeing the operation.
And the reason that we are hearing so much allegations from facilities such as the one in New Jersey and the one in Louisiana and a lot of complaints and allegations in California was because (a) a lot of these oversight mechanisms inside ICE have been gutted by Kristi Noem, the former Secretary of Homeland Security.
A lot of these offices that were previously set up were no longer there, or they were stripped to the very bare structure — which basically prevented them from conducting any meaningful oversight. And (b) these facilities are not the traditional prison system where families and lawyers can just regularly schedule visits. These are the kinds of facilities that are not accessible to the general public. And sometimes even state governments are having a pretty difficult time getting access to these facilities as well.
JG: That was Philip Wang, reporter from Time Magazine. Before that, we talked with Perla Trevizo from ProPublica. Today’s episode was reported and produced by me, Jimmy Gutierrez, and edited by Ann Elise Henzl.
Status Pending is produced by WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR — part of the NPR Network.
Next time on 'Status Pending'
And just a heads up: our next episode will come out the week after elections. That’s when we’ll wrap up our series looking into ICE. We’re going to learn about the long push to abolish ICE.
Thanks as always for listening. Subscribe to Status Pending for more stories about immigration in Wisconsin and beyond.
