Hundreds of detainees begin hunger strike at US immigration facility over conditions

Hundreds of detainees at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility have refused food in protest at conditions inside a detention system that has nearly doubled in size since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

What is happening

The hunger strike, which began in the last week of May, follows a documented pattern of protests at ICE facilities including Adelanto in California, Irwin County in Georgia, and Glades in Florida. Detainees have repeatedly cited overcrowded cells, inadequate medical care, and prolonged confinement without any hearing as the conditions that make a hunger strike the only option they feel they have left.

ICE’s own internal policy, ERO directive 11065.1, governs the agency’s response to hunger strikes. In previous cases, ICE has sought court orders to force-feed detainees. The American Medical Association considers force-feeding a competent adult on hunger strike a violation of medical ethics.

ICE disputes participant headcounts in cases like this as a matter of routine. The agency’s standard position is that detainees receive adequate nutrition and medical care. The gap between the numbers reported by detainees’ legal representatives and the numbers the agency acknowledges is always part of the story.

The machine behind the cells

The detention surge is not improvised. Congressional appropriations in early 2025 funded a push toward 100,000 detention beds. The two main private contractors running ICE facilities, GEO Group and CoreCivic, reported combined revenues of more than $4.3bn in the last financial year. Both have expanded their federal contracts under the current administration.

The DHS Office of Inspector General and the ACLU filed documented complaints through 2024 and 2025 about conditions at facilities including Adelanto, Otay Mesa, and Northwest ICE Processing Center in Washington state. The complaints covered overcrowding, inadequate medical attention, and the use of solitary confinement. They produced no meaningful change to the contract terms.

People held in these facilities are not, in the main, convicted criminals. Many are asylum seekers with pending cases, or long-term residents caught by the administration’s expanded enforcement criteria. ICE and its allies in Congress will characterise hunger strikers as deportable criminals gaming the system. The public record, wherever it has been examined, tells a different story.

The hunger strike is the detainees’ last lever. The detention system does not give them many others.

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