AILSA CHANG, HOST:
As the Trump administration arrests and detains record numbers of immigrants who lack full legal status, more of them are passing through county jails. Many local governments have contracts with ICE to hold people until their deportation proceedings. And one detention center in Kansas underscores what advocates say are dangerous conditions happening more often as ICE expands its use of county jails. Zane Irwin of the Kansas News Service reports.
ZANE IRWIN, BYLINE: The Chase County Detention Center is in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, two hours away from the nearest immigration court. Since 2008, the county's had an agreement with the federal government to hold ICE detainees. Jose, who overstayed a visa but had applied for deportation protections, spent many weeks at the facility this year. He asked that only his first name be used for fear of retaliation. Jose says the experience was unbearable because he has gout, a form of arthritis that causes bouts of searing joint pain.
JOSE: Those are really horrible days for me. I can't even walk to the bathroom. You know, like, being in jail with that pain, it's just, like, what's going to happen to me?
IRWIN: In the Chase County jail, Jose says he was often forced to sleep on the ground, which made the pain worse. And when he asked for medical help...
JOSE: I talked to the nurse and I told her, and she said, oh, yeah, in five days, if it doesn't go away, I will take you to the hospital. Ten days passed by. Eleven. Like, 15 days passed by, it never happened.
IRWIN: Genevra Alberti is an immigration attorney at a firm that's represented several Chase County detainees. Her clients have complained about being crammed with three people in cells designed for two, widespread skin irritation caused by jail-provided shampoo and soap and persistent medical neglect. She says one client named Luis Diaz Inestroza spent weeks at the facility without receiving treatment for a tooth infection. He chose to return to Honduras without seeing his immigration case through.
GENEVRA ALBERTI: He could not stomach the idea of staying and fighting his case, even though his whole family is here, because he was in such severe pain.
IRWIN: Chase County Sheriff Jacob Welsh runs the facility. He said, in a statement, the jail gets positive feedback from inspections, which are performed by ICE contractors in the Department of Homeland Security. An inspection last March found no serious health and safety violations in Chase County. ICE detention statistics show the agency has used over 170 facilities in the past year to hold immigrants awaiting deportation proceedings. At least a third of those are county jails. In those local facilities, migrants without legal status often outnumber people who have been arrested locally. And Eunice Cho at the American Civil Liberties Union says the rush to detain and deport immigrants has led to overcrowding and dangerous conditions in some detention centers used by ICE.
EUNICE CHO: These facilities are places where there's terrible neglect, incredible amounts of abuse that are - is allowed to happen, where people die because of the fact that they are not receiving proper medical care.
IRWIN: ICE has reported at least 20 detainee deaths so far this year, the most since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Border czar Tom Homan defended the agency's practices in June when a reporter asked him about a detainee death in Florida.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TOM HOMAN: I mean, people die in ICE custody. People die in county jails. People die in state prisons. I mean, people can argue with me all they want, but the facts are the facts, that we have the highest detention standards in the industry.
IRWIN: Some detainees, like Jose, disagree. And he says rough conditions weren't the only reason that people thought about leaving the U.S. He says, once or twice per week, an immigration officer would visit Chase County, promising detainees a thousand dollars if they chose to self-deport.
JOSE: It makes you feel that you want to give up everything that you've done on this country. They don't care. They don't care.
IRWIN: Jose was able to leave Chase County without being deported - for now. But he seriously considered signing on the dotted line just to get out, even if it meant abandoning his work and his family. For NPR News, I'm Zane Irwin in Kansas City, Missouri.
(SOUNDBITE OF KENDRICK LAMAR SONG, "SING ABOUT ME, I'M DYING OF THIRST") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
