In the summer of 2025, the debate over the United States’ immigration detention system has reached a boiling point, with new lawsuits, expanded facilities, and mounting concerns about the treatment of detainees. While headlines have often focused on Florida’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz,” Georgia and New York have quietly become epicenters in the struggle over how—and where—the nation holds thousands of migrants awaiting deportation or asylum hearings.
In June, Charlton County, Georgia, just a stone’s throw from the Florida border, signed a nearly $50 million agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dramatically expand the Folkston ICE Processing Center. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this move will increase the center’s capacity from 1,100 to nearly 3,000 detainees, incorporating the shuttered D. Ray James Correctional Facility into the complex. The expansion is part of President Donald Trump’s much-touted “Big Beautiful Bill,” which has earmarked an eye-popping $45 billion for ICE detention centers through September 2029.
Local officials in Georgia see the project as an economic windfall. U.S. Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, a Republican representing the state, has championed the facility, highlighting the creation of 400 new jobs and a boost in water and sewer revenue for Charlton County. But for immigrant advocates and detainees, the reality inside these centers paints a much darker picture.
Back in 2021, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General conducted a surprise inspection at Folkston. The findings, published in 2022, were damning. The report cited “unsanitary and dilapidated” conditions: water leaks, mold, debris in the ventilation system, insect infestations, broken toilets, a lack of hot showers, and even no hot meals. “Folkston did not meet standards for facility conditions, medical care, grievances, segregation, staff-detainee communications, and handling of detainee property,” the report stated. “We identified violations that compromised the health, safety, and rights of detainees.”
Tragedy has struck within those walls. In 2024, Jaspal Singh, a 57-year-old Indian national, died after spending nine months detained at Folkston. His death sparked outrage and renewed calls for reform. “We are heartbroken by Mr. Singh’s passing while he was confined in this abusive and poorly managed facility that has been violating immigrants’ human rights since ICE began detaining people there in 2017,” said Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, in a statement urging the facility’s closure.
The expansion in Georgia comes amid broader efforts by state officials to support Trump’s immigration agenda. In March 2025, Governor Brian Kemp announced that the Georgia Department of Public Safety had requested ICE to train 1,100 officers “to better assist in identifying and apprehending illegal aliens who pose a risk to public safety in the state.” By May, Kemp had signed House Bill 1105, requiring sheriffs to hold suspects believed to be in the country illegally if they are wanted by ICE. Yet, according to reporting, none of the sheriffs in metro Atlanta’s five core counties have signed up to participate in the program.
For Atlanta’s immigrant community—estimated by Pew Research to include around 200,000 Black immigrants, primarily from Jamaica, Haiti, and Nigeria—the developments have stoked anxiety. Nana Gyamfi, executive director for The Black Alliance for Just Immigration, explained to Capital B Atlanta why Black immigrants face unique risks: “What we know from the data, as well as anecdotal experiences, is that most law enforcement interactions with Black immigrants begin as racial profiling that then goes down another road when the officer hears an accent or realizes there is a language barrier,” she said. “As a result, Black migrants are detained, deported and held in solitary confinement at a disproportionately higher rate.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a legal battle is unfolding in New York City over the conditions inside ICE’s holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza. On August 8, 2025, Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, a Peruvian immigrant and father of two, filed a potential class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration, denouncing what he calls “overcrowded and unsanitary” conditions in the facility’s 10th-floor cells. According to The New York Times, these cells—traditionally used for short-term processing—are now holding migrants for days, sometimes more than a week, far exceeding ICE’s own 72-hour limit. The lawsuit, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the law firm Wang Hecker, alleges that detainees are often forced to sleep on concrete floors or sitting upright, lack access to legal counsel and prescribed medications, and are served such meager meals that one detainee reportedly lost 24 pounds.
“People are being deprived of their basic rights, facing medical neglect, and they lack access to adequate food and hygiene,” said Harold Solis, a co-legal director of Make the Road New York, the immigrant advocacy group representing Barco Mercado. “This cruel detention policy is immoral and inhumane.”
ICE, for its part, has denied the allegations. The agency told The Times that “overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false.” Officials insist the 10th-floor cells are temporary processing centers, not long-term detention sites, and have used this rationale to deny access to members of Congress seeking to inspect the premises.
Yet, new federal data analyzed by The Times shows that since Trump returned to office in January 2025, ICE has arrested more than 2,300 people in the New York City area, with about half of them held at 26 Federal Plaza. Many are subsequently transferred to facilities in New Jersey, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, near Buffalo, or even the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn—a site some federal judges have described as “barbaric.”
The legal challenges don’t stop at conditions. Last week, immigrant rights groups filed another lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, challenging the federal government’s practice of arresting migrants as they arrive for routine court hearings. The suit argues that these courthouse arrests have turned the very places meant to guarantee due process into “traps,” discouraging migrants from appearing for their mandated hearings and putting them at greater risk of deportation.
Efforts by Democratic lawmakers to conduct oversight have been repeatedly stymied. Representatives Adriano Espaillat, Dan Goldman, and Nydia Velázquez—all Democrats from New York—were denied entry to both 26 Federal Plaza and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as recently as August 6-8, 2025. Their attempts to gain access mirror similar blocked efforts in California and Texas, as congressional scrutiny over ICE practices intensifies.
As the contract for Georgia’s new detention facility awaits approval by the Department of Government Efficiency, and lawsuits in New York wind their way through the courts, the future of America’s immigration detention system remains uncertain. For the thousands of migrants caught in the system—many fleeing violence, seeking asylum, or simply hoping for a better life—the stakes could not be higher.
Amid the legal wrangling, political posturing, and bureaucratic maneuvering, it’s the lived experiences of detainees—sleeping on concrete, denied basic care, and facing an uncertain future—that continue to fuel calls for reform and accountability.