The 911 Calls Inside ICE Detention Centers

WIRED

08-07-2025

By Leah Feiger and Dhruv Mehrotra Jul 8, 2025 12:15 PM On this episode of Uncanny Valley , we unpack WIRED's recent investigation of 911 calls made from the facilities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains migrants. Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images
Our senior politics editor Leah Feiger speaks with WIRED's Dhruv Mehrotra about an exclusive WIRED investigation into how serious medical incidents are increasing at some of the country's largest immigration detention centers.
You can follow Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger and Dhruv Mehrotra on Bluesky at @dmehro. Write to us at [e-mail].
Mentioned in this episode:
'They're Not Breathing': Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls by Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron
How to Protect Yourself From Phone Searches at the US Border by Lily Hay Newman and Matt Burgess
The WIRED Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance by Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman
Here's What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent by Zoë Schiffer How to Listen
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Leah Feiger: Hey, this is Leah. Do you have a tech-related question that's been on your mind or just a topic that you wish we talked about more on the show? If so, you can write to us at [e-mail]. And if you listen to and enjoy our episodes, please rate it and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. It really helps other people find us. And a heads up that this episode deals with sensitive content like suicide attempts and sexual assault, please take care while listening. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED Senior politics editor Leah Feiger, filling in today for Zoe Schiffer. Today on the show, an exclusive WIRED investigation on how serious medical incidents are increasing at some of the country's largest immigration detention centers. By looking at data from 911 calls, WIRED reporters, Dhruv Mehrotra and Del Cameron found that in at least 60% of the ICE centers they analyzed, there were reports of serious pregnancy complications, suicide attempts, or sexual assault allegations. Their findings show how these detention centers have quickly become overwhelmed, following the administration's immigration crackdown, and its mandate for more frequent and often indiscriminate arrests. To dive into the show, I'm joined by WIRED's Dhruv Mehrotra. Dhruv, welcome.
Dhruv Mehrotra: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Leah Feiger: So Dhruv, talk me through how you went about reporting this. What prompted you to look at the 911 calls from ICE detention centers? And most importantly, what did you find?
Dhruv Mehrotra: Well, immigration detention centers are largely black boxes, right? Attorneys can't see living areas. And advocates told us that even tightly controlled tours have mostly stopped getting approved by ICE. At the same time arrests are surging, and we've been hearing reports about deteriorating conditions. So what we really wanted to know here was, what's actually happening inside of these overcrowded facilities right now? People in custody often are too afraid to speak publicly, and ICE can take months or even years in some cases to respond to records requests. So instead Del and I decided to kind of look more locally, right? We looked at local agencies like sheriff's departments and EMS crews for records from people who respond directly to ICE facilities when there's a real emergency. So that led us to these 911 call records, which offered one of the clearest, and frankly the most alarming windows into how overwhelmed the system really is.
Leah Feiger: And so when tracing the spike in all of these medical incidents, you also looked at 10 of the country's largest immigration detention centers. There was one that really stood out. Stewart Detention Center in rural Georgia. You reported that the population at this center has actually increased by 10%, and the medical emergencies at the center have more than tripled. And they've also reported more in-custody deaths since 2017 than any other facility nationwide. What is going on there? How does something like that even happen?
Dhruv Mehrotra: Yeah. As you mentioned, Stewart really stood out in the data. And in fact, as we were reporting the story out, two people at Stewart or on their way to Stewart died according to ICE, including one by suicide early last month. So part of what makes Stewart so dangerous, I think, is where it's located. Stewart is in a remote rural county in Georgia, hours from advanced medical care. Local hospitals have shut down, and according to the records we have, EMS response times are long. And in emergencies, detainees can be left waiting hours, right? One kind of particularly shocking call here is that we got a call from a pregnant woman who was reportedly spitting up blood. And EMS logs show that it took over two hours to clear that call.
Leah Feiger: That's wild.
Dhruv Mehrotra: Yeah. It's devastating to listen to, and to think through what these records really mean. But the numbers don't really capture the full story. So we also spoke to families of people who were detained at Stewart, and attorneys who visited regularly. And they all largely described the same thing, which is a system that's really buckling under its own weight.
Leah Feiger: I think something that really stood out to me as well from these cases from Stewart in your reporting, is all of the abruptly dropped 911 calls as well. It really created this picture of an us versus them. People just entirely captured, caged almost, while this is going on, unable to actually even get assistance.
Dhruv Mehrotra: Yeah. I mean, the records that we have are 911 calls, right? And so they are only records of things that resulted in a call. And experts tell us that for every one call that we got, there's probably many, many, many more medical emergencies that go unreported. And the records give some kind of clue into that, right? I think one good example of what you're talking about, Leah, is a call that we received from a woman at Stewart who got a hold of the phone, and called 911, and basically kept asking the dispatcher for help. She said, "I need help, I need a UTA." And the call abruptly dropped.
[Archival audio]: 911, where is your emergency?
[Archival audio]: Do you speak in Spanish?
[Archival audio]: Excuse me?
[Archival audio]: Do you speak in Spanish?
[Archival audio]: No, ma'am.
[Archival audio]: I need help, a UTA.
[Archival audio]: Are you in the prison?
[Archival audio]: Yeah. In jail, yeah, by name...
Dhruv Mehrotra: So the dispatcher called back. And when the dispatcher called back, a staff member answered the phone, and basically dismissed it, saying, "Look, sorry, we're at a detention center, a detainee called 911." And no ambulance was sent.
[Archival audio]: I'm sorry, we're at a-
[Archival audio]: [Inaudible]
[Archival audio]: We're a detention center, Stewart Detention Center, and the detainee called 911. I'm sorry.
[Archival audio]: Okay, thank you.
Dhruv Mehrotra: And even in that call, you can hear this detainee kind of pleading in the background. So clearly this is a moment where someone thought that they needed medical care, and they weren't able to get it and they were prevented from getting it. And really, this is just one example, multiple family members of detainees told us the same thing. That their loved ones haven't been able to get the care that they have needed, even in times when they believe that their loved one should have been brought to the hospital for a serious crisis.
Leah Feiger: Right, and like you said, you spoke to family members and you also spoke to immigration lawyers and experts to really fill in these gaps and contextualize what you found because you had the 911 calls and not that much more else. What were some of these gaps that they filled in for you?
Dhruv Mehrotra: We were careful not to treat the 911 data as the full story because sometimes it's just audio that we have, other times it's just sort of a brief narrative of a medical emergency. So these calls only capture moments when emergencies were bad enough, or visible enough for staff to pick up the phone and call. But experts and advocates are quick to point out that for every call there are likely many others that weren't made. So in the conversations that we had with attorneys and families and formerly detained people, those conversations were crucial, they gave us the context that the records alone couldn't. A woman named Mildred Pierre, her fiance is a double amputee who's detained at Stewart. She told us that in the last month or so, he broke his prosthetic limbs in a fall. And he had to wait for days to be even seen by medical staff at Stewart. Another example is a woman named Kylie Chinchilla who said that her daughter, who's a nursing student with scoliosis and also a detainee at Stewart, is often left sleeping on the floor in pain with parts of her face going numb. And her condition is getting worse and she's in pain.
Leah Feiger: Let's take a quick break. We're going to be right back. And when we return, we're going to look further into what has led to this increase in medical emergencies at ICE centers. When considering what factors have led to this increase in medical emergencies at ICE centers, overcrowding is one of the main ones. Dhruv, can you tell me how bad is it right now? And is this a direct result of the current administration's immigration crackdown?
Dhruv Mehrotra: So overcrowding is a critical piece of this puzzle according to experts and immigration attorneys that we spoke to. Overall ICE's detained population has jumped over 48% since January, now exceeding 59,000 people. And I mean, that's just an estimate, right? The numbers probably far higher than that. And that's swell in population isn't by accident, it follows a deliberate policy push by this administration. Earlier this year ICE, under the direction of senior administration officials, intensified enforcement efforts and ramped up arrests. And that, of course, led to an influx of detainees, many of whom have these pre-existing health conditions, and that stretched medical units and staffing beyond their limits, according to the experts that we spoke to. And remember, these aren't violent offenders who are being held. The administration has made it sort of deliberate policy choice to target virtually anyone, even people who have been here for decades and haven't been convicted of any kind of violent crime. Not that it matters in this case, right? No one should be treated like this, but I think it's important to contextualize who's being held here in civil detention, not criminal detention.
Leah Feiger: Absolutely. President Donald Trump and his really right-hand man on immigration, Stephen Miller, they are pushing day in, day out. It feels like you cannot go a single week in this administration without hearing about these renewed goals to increase ICE numbers, and to increase ICE funding, and just their ability to take kind of whoever they want off the streets right now in an effort to really buoy their numbers. And you guys also spent a good bit of time talking about how these ICE centers are in such remote areas, which at least from the outside, makes it seem like it would be pretty hard to get these folks support that they would need. Is this tactical?
Dhruv Mehrotra: Yeah. That's a good question. I can say that as a strategy, ICE has been moving people around from detention center to detention center. And in an effort from what experts described to kind of deprive people of the representation that they have, or the immigration attorneys that they've retained, or from family members and loved ones. So I think moving people around and moving people from, in one case I talked to someone who was moved from Buffalo, New York all the way to Adelanto, California in a matter of days, and that's across the country. He didn't know anybody over there.
Leah Feiger: Right, that's massive, that's everything. That's your entire community. And you guys did also report that the vast majority of the centers that you looked into are owned by two private prison companies, the GEO Group and CoreCivic. How have they benefited from the administration's approach? And what did they say when you presented them with your findings?
Dhruv Mehrotra: Geo Group and CoreCivic currently operate most of the ICE facilities that we reviewed, and I think they operate most of the ICE facilities in general. So under the current administration's aggressive enforcement strategy, which aims to detain around 100,000 people, these two corporations have secured numerous lucrative contracts including these no bid contracts for reopening shuttered prisons. And just to get a sense of the scale here, right? GEO anticipates earning over $70 million in annual revenue just from one new facility. And CoreCivic, the other sort of private prison giant here, they're opening or reopening multiple sites and benefiting from expanded bed capacity. And that's according to reporting from the AP. So we reached out to both of them, and CoreCivic emphasized that their facilities are staffed by licensed medical professionals and adhere to audits and national standards. And that's something that GEO groups similarly pointed out. But those responses, they focused on policy and paperwork, and not the actual kind of cost to families and attorneys and detainees had described. I think there seems to be an unwillingness to even concede that this stuff is happening in their facilities in spite of multiple reports.
Leah Feiger: Obviously, the Trump administration has made immigration and immigration crackdown such a core part of their policy platform over the last couple of months. But I do have to say that for years there have been hundreds of reports of sexual assaults and other abuses happening at ICE centers. Is there a path forward for accountability, or are we kind of on pause for the next couple of years while the administration just keeps shoving as many people as they can into these facilities?
Dhruv Mehrotra: Right. These problems didn't start with this administration. There have been a sort of long and well-documented history of things like sexual abuse inside of ICE detention centers. And in that regard, our own reporting we found multiple 911 calls in 2025 alone that reference sexual assaults, including one described as staff on detainee. I mean, as you said, it's a deeply serious allegation and it's not new. But what's changed is the ability to respond to it. In recent months, the Trump administration has gutted the oversight offices at DHS that were responsible for investigating these types of abuses in detention, including the CRCL, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. So without them, there's almost no system left to track or escalate these cases. One advocate I spoke to called it a "black box of impunity." And I think that's a good way to put it.
Leah Feiger: We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to share our recommendations for what to check out on WIRED.com this week. Welcome back to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED senior politics editor, Leah Feiger filling in today for Zoe Schiffer. Before we take off, Dhruv, tell our listeners what they absolutely need to read on WIRED.com.
Dhruv Mehrotra: There are two pieces that I keep returning to. I think if you're listening to this and you're thinking about how it all connects to your rights and your safety. The two pieces that I would recommend on WIRED right now are these guides. So first, we have a guide to how to protect yourself from phone searches at the U.S border. It's a great explainer on what CBP, Customs and Border Protection can do and can't do with your devices when you across the border. And the second piece in the same vein is a WIRED guide to protecting yourself from government surveillance. So yeah, I think those are two really good stories that give you some actionable things to do.
Leah Feiger: They're so good. Honestly, cannot recommend those to enough. I feel like anytime that a relative, friend, whoever is like, "What can I do?" I send those guides over, and they're always greeted with a lot of enthusiasm and fear, and fear because it's really terrifying, but really, really good stuff. Okay. My recommendation is in a totally different direction, so bear with me. But the business desk this week led by Zoe Schiffer have been pulling scoop after scoop about the AI talent war that's going on between Sam Altman's OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. And the reason I think that I can't stop thinking about this, is obviously I usually edit politics coverage. And so it is so wild to see these grown adult men just throwing millions and millions and millions of dollars at AI, and random researchers, and talking about their companies as if they're going to save the world, while we're seeing all of this reporting on things that are so sad and so devastating. So I wouldn't say it's levity, but I would say that it is if you want to hate billionaires more, a good read, Dhruv, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dhruv Mehrotra: Thanks for having me.
Leah Feiger: That's our show for today. We're going to link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley for a deep critical dive into the man who ushered in the era of artificial intelligence as we know it, Sam Altman. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal mixed this episode. Pran Bandi was our New York studio engineer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. And Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director.