According to a study by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), US immigration authorities have increased the number of detention centers in the country by 69%. The report details that, of the 26 detention centers that existed in 2024, 18 more were added this year, where an average of 65,000 immigrants are being held nationwide—a record number amid the increase in raids ordered by the Trump administration. According to the report, in these detention centers, people suffer serious violations of due process and human rights. Guards and ICE officials often prevent them from communicating with their loved ones and lawyers. Some are subjected to hearings or deported quickly before lawyers can find them and offer assistance. ICE agents often pressure people to drop their applications and accept “voluntary departure” orders or removal orders, even if they meet the requirements, to avoid prolonged detention in horrific and deadly conditions.

Many NIJC clients confirmed to investigators that they were denied medical care or held in solitary confinement without a clear reason. Transgender clients reported being married in inappropriate cells or dormitories.

The report also details operations carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, recently in Chicago, where undocumented immigrants are “disappeared” as soon as they are in federal custody and transferred to contracted county jails, federal and state prisons, or private detention centers.

Many of these centers have recently signed contracts with ICE or increased their capacity as part of the expansion of the immigrant detention system in the Midwest and the country.

the research indicates.

The deportation system depends directly on detention capacity, and to sustain it, the Trump Administration is seeking to double the number of beds to 107,000, while ICE currently holds more than 65,000 people in custody, a record number, according to the study.

The new centers are mostly leased spaces in county jails,but also include maximum-security prisons such as Marion in Indianapolis and the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Illinois has prohibited ICE from detaining people in its county jails and state prisons, but the agency has increasingly used its Broadview processing facility near Chicago to hold people for weeks before their deportation or transfer to centers in another state.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed NIJC lawyers that the Chicago area of ??operations facilities reached to house 3,000 detainees at its peak, and that ICE was working to expand into a newly closed private prison in Kansas.

Undocumented immigrants are “disappearing”

Immigration detention poses serious barriers to accessing legal assistance, and as people are sent to detention centers, it becomes increasingly difficult for lawyers to locate them within the system.

ICE's online locator is supposed to be a key tool for finding people in its extensive network of jails and prisons, but in recent months it has taken days to locate detainees, warns a report by the National Immigrant Justice Center.

In some cases, it states, people simply stopped appearing in the system altogether, even though they were eventually found to be in ICE custody.

This leaves clients isolated and lawyers struggling to find people before they are deported without due process.

process.

CBP agents have also arrested hundreds of people during operations in the Chicago area, with little to no transparency about their fate.