Across the United States, the landscape of immigration detention is shifting rapidly, marked by mounting legal challenges, controversial facility expansions, and intensifying scrutiny of detainee treatment. From San Francisco to Portland, El Paso to rural Louisiana, a string of recent developments has put U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its partners in the spotlight, raising urgent questions about civil liberties, due process, and the very nature of detention in America.
On September 18, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several local advocacy groups filed a sweeping class-action lawsuit against ICE in the Northern District of California. Their suit, reported by Mission Local, targets the agency’s practice of arresting asylum-seekers outside immigration courts across Northern California and confining them in what the plaintiffs describe as “punitive and inhumane” conditions at the ICE field office at 630 Sansome Street in downtown San Francisco. The facility, which sits just a few floors below an immigration court, has drawn intense scrutiny for detaining individuals for up to six days—far longer than its original design for short-term stays of less than 12 hours.
According to the lawsuit, asylum-seekers have been forced to endure “small, cold rooms, sometimes with hardly enough space to sit, let alone sleep.” Basic hygiene supplies, bathing facilities, changes of clothes, and even prescribed medications are often unavailable. The holding cells lack beds, leaving detainees to sleep on metal benches or directly on the floor, with only a thin plastic blanket or mat. The lights remain on around the clock, and the rooms are kept at what the suit calls “bitterly cold temperatures.” Sanitation is another major issue: detainees have reportedly had to clean filthy toilets themselves with dry toilet paper when the stench became unbearable.
The ACLU’s legal action, joined by the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco and CARECEN, represents three asylum-seekers—Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, Martin Hernandez-Torres, and Ligia Garcia—who all experienced these conditions firsthand. The plaintiffs argue that ICE’s actions violate the First and Fifth Amendments, particularly the due process protections enshrined in the Fifth Amendment. They are asking the court to nullify ICE’s memos permitting courthouse arrests and to mandate improvements to the conditions at 630 Sansome.
This lawsuit comes amid a broader national reckoning over the treatment of immigrants in detention. In June 2025, ICE increased its national holding limit from 12 to 72 hours, a move that Mission Local found led to a significant spike in extended detentions in San Francisco. In June alone, 35 people were held for more than 12 hours at the city’s ICE facility. The overwhelming majority of those detained—about 71 percent, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse—have no criminal record.
Legal access is another flashpoint. Attorneys are barred from entering the San Francisco holding cells after 3 p.m. or on weekends, and detainees must pay for phone calls that are monitored by ICE agents and often suffer from poor audio quality. This, the lawsuit contends, impedes detainees’ right to counsel and undermines their ability to pursue lawful claims for asylum or relief from removal.
Meanwhile, the city of Portland, Oregon, is grappling with its own ICE controversy. As reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland officials revealed that ICE held detainees at its local processing center at 4310 S. Macadam Avenue beyond the 12-hour limit or overnight 25 times between October 2024 and July 2025, violating the federal government’s land use agreement with the city. The facility, which is not meant for long-term detention, is at the center of heated calls from community members to revoke ICE’s operating agreement altogether. Mayor Keith Wilson stated, “U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement made clear detention limitation commitments to our community, and we believe they broke those policies more than two dozen times.”
The city’s investigation, launched in late July 2025 after formal complaints, also highlighted safety concerns stemming from protests outside the facility—some of which involved the use of chemical munitions like pepper balls. These tensions prompted a nearby charter school to relocate in August, citing worries for student safety. Oregon’s state law prohibits local jails from contracting with the federal government to hold immigration detainees, making the violations at the Portland facility particularly contentious.
Farther south, at the Fort Bliss ICE detention center near El Paso, Texas—also known as Camp East Montana—transparency and access to counsel have come under fire. As detailed by the El Paso Times, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on September 15, 2025, raising concerns about inconsistent and unclear procedures for legal visits and calls. Nonprofit and pro bono legal service providers have reported significant barriers to contacting detainees and scheduling confidential meetings. As of August 28, the facility held approximately 1,400 detainees.
Rep. Crockett’s letter emphasized that detainees have a constitutional right to due process and meaningful, timely, and confidential access to legal representation. She requested a comprehensive copy of Camp East Montana’s legal visitation policies and detailed information on procedures for in-person, telephonic, and video attorney meetings. These demands are part of ongoing congressional oversight efforts to ensure ICE meets its legal obligations regarding access to counsel and humane treatment in detention.
Perhaps the most dramatic recent development in immigration detention policy comes from Louisiana. In late July 2025, Governor Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency due to overcrowding at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola—the largest maximum security prison in the country. The emergency order allowed the rapid refurbishment of the notorious Camp J unit, infamous for extended solitary confinement and brutality, as reported by The Guardian.
But the twist? The reopening of Camp J was not to house Louisiana’s own growing prison population, but to serve as a new holding site for immigrant detainees swept up in President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown. At a press conference in early September, Landry and Trump administration officials announced that the facility would house the “worst of the worst” immigrant detainees. Landry criticized what he called Democratic “open border policies,” claiming they had allowed violent criminals, rapists, child-predators, human traffickers, and drug dealers into the country. Yet, as The Guardian notes, numerous studies have found that undocumented immigrants commit serious crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens and that increased undocumented immigration does not lead to higher crime rates in specific localities.
The Angola facility—dubbed the “Louisiana lockup” by the Trump White House—can hold over 400 detainees. Its notorious history as “the dungeon” and its ties to the state’s plantation past have made the move deeply controversial. Advocates like Nora Ahmed, legal director at the ACLU of Louisiana, argue that using the prison’s reputation is a deliberate attempt to conflate civil immigration detention with criminal incarceration, stoking public fear and misunderstanding. “Angola’s history as a plantation and the abuse and allegations that have surrounded Angola as an institution is meant to strike fear in the American public,” Ahmed said.
As legal battles rage and policy shifts continue, the treatment of immigrants in U.S. detention remains a national flashpoint—one that is drawing ever more attention from activists, lawmakers, and communities alike.
