Story Highlights
- ICE staff used physical force or chemical agents 780 times across 98 detention facilities in Trump’s first year back in office, up 37% from the prior year
- Incidents include guards pepper-spraying 65 people at a New Mexico facility who were on a hunger strike over inadequate food and showers
- The Post analysis is likely an undercount, as it excludes roughly 140 additional facilities housing approximately 14% of all ICE detainees nationwide
What Happened
The Washington Post published an investigation Monday based on hundreds of internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement emails known as the “Daily Detainee Assault Report,” obtained from a government employee who shared the records on the condition of anonymity. The documents summarize every incident in which staff members at ICE detention facilities reported using physical force against detainees. Reporters reviewed records from 98 ICE facilities spanning January 2024 through February 2026, covering the final year of the Biden administration and the first year of Trump’s second term.
The analysis found at least 780 use-of-force incidents during Trump’s first year — a 37 percent increase compared to the year prior. The records documented the use of physical restraints, chemical agents including pepper spray and pepper balls, and other control measures against immigrant detainees. In multiple incidents, guards forcibly handled detainees who had made requests for food, water, medical care, and personal belongings — items the Post noted detainees are legally entitled to receive.
One of the most striking individual incidents documented in the investigation took place at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico. Guards deployed pepper spray against 65 people who were participating in a hunger strike over what they described as inadequate food and access to showers. The Post also reported on the case of Pedro Cantú Ríos, a 68-year-old man who was eating lunch at an Alaska detention facility when chemical agents known as pepper balls were discharged into the communal space by guards.
A deeper pattern emerged in how these incidents were documented over time. The Post found that after Trump took office, facilities shifted from writing detailed narratives of force incidents to producing short, formulaic sentences with minimal information. The average narrative in 2025 contained roughly 40 words — about one-third the length of narratives from the year prior. Five reports used the term “guided” to describe incidents that in prior documentation would have been described more explicitly, including one instance where an officer picked up a detainee in a bear hug and threw him to the ground.
Why It Matters
The timing of this investigation is significant. The 37 percent increase in documented force comes as ICE detention capacity has expanded dramatically under Trump’s mass deportation agenda. At the peak of the surge earlier this year, a record 73,000 people were being held in immigration detention facilities nationwide. Even as that number has moderated slightly to approximately 60,000, it still represents a substantial expansion of the detention population — which the investigation suggests has been accompanied by deteriorating conditions and increased confrontation between staff and detainees.
The legal framework governing detainee treatment is clear. Immigration detainees are civil, not criminal, detainees. They have legal rights to adequate food, water, medical care, and their personal property. The Post’s investigation found documented instances in which guards used force specifically in response to detainees requesting those legally guaranteed basics, raising questions about compliance with federal detention standards across the ICE facility network.
The concurrent shutdown of the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman — the primary federal body responsible for investigating misconduct inside detention facilities — compounds these accountability concerns significantly. As of Monday, OIDO’s public-facing website was taken down, its inspections ended, and its staff largely dispersed. Legal advocates argue that eliminating oversight in real time, as detention population and use-of-force incidents both rise, creates a dangerous accountability vacuum.
Economic and Global Context
Senate Republicans are currently advancing a roughly $70 billion immigration enforcement package through the reconciliation process. Approximately $38 billion of that total is earmarked for ICE operations and expansion. That funding would extend through fiscal year 2029, locking in the structural architecture of Trump’s mass detention regime for several years. The investment is premised in part on the argument that robust detention serves as a deterrent to illegal immigration — a claim that critics argue is unsupported by the evidence and that the new use-of-force data complicates further.
Internationally, the conditions inside U.S. immigration detention facilities have drawn scrutiny from human rights organizations and foreign governments whose nationals are being held. The deaths of 31 ICE detainees last year — the highest total since 2004 — and at least 18 deaths in the first four months of 2026 have attracted attention from international bodies and generated diplomatic friction with countries of origin. Several legal challenges to detention conditions are currently proceeding through federal courts.
The Post’s investigation also found that the data it reviewed is almost certainly incomplete. The 140 excluded facilities house a meaningful share of the total detainee population, and the formulaic, abbreviated narratives that became standard in 2025 make it harder to assess severity. The gap between documented incidents and actual incidents is difficult to measure and may be widening.
Implications
The investigation is likely to intensify congressional oversight pressure, particularly from Democratic lawmakers who are already calling for hearings into ICE detention conditions. However, with Republicans controlling both chambers and advancing legislation that dramatically expands ICE funding, the practical legislative pathway for imposing new restrictions or oversight requirements on detention facilities is limited in the near term.
For detainees and their families, the findings underscore the risks of an expanding system with diminishing oversight. Advocacy organizations including the Detention Watch Network have indicated they will seek to fill the watchdog gap through litigation and direct advocacy, but acknowledge that a federal office with statutory authority to compel ICE cooperation represents a form of leverage that civil society groups cannot fully replicate.
For the Trump administration, the report poses a communications challenge. The White House has framed mass deportation and detention as essential to domestic security. Documented patterns of force against detainees requesting food and water complicate that narrative and provide opponents with concrete evidence of conditions inside a system the administration is simultaneously seeking to expand and defund oversight for.
Sources
“Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers”
