‘They’re Not Breathing’: Inside The Chaos Of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls

WIRED investigated hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers to reveal a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding:

In recent months, the Trump administration has quietly gutted two critical oversight bodies at DHS responsible for investigating abuses in detention: the immigration detention ombuds office and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. According to Zain Lakhani of the Women’s Refugee Commission, their dismantling has left detained migrants with virtually no channel to report sexual assault, medical neglect, or violations of parental rights. “These statutory obligations that they have to prevent and respond to sexual abuse, there’s no one to actually do this work now,” she says.

The administration hasn’t said how it will handle the abandoned complaints or meet its obligations under PREA. Groups like WRC, once granted regular access to ICE facilities to document abuses and escalate reports, have been effectively cut off—resulting in what Lakhani calls a “black box of impunity.”

Like other experts, Lakhani says gauging the true scale of sexual abuse in detention is nearly impossible. “I think using 911 calls at the best of times is only going to capture a very, very small fraction of the number of cases,” she says. “And migrants are also terrified. They’re calling from inside detention and they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.”

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