Friends,
Our family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and fellow community members being held by ICE do not surrender their humanity when they enter detention.
They do not surrender their right to medical care. They do not surrender their dignity. And they certainly do not surrender their right to live.
At People Power United, we champion progress over fear. That means we cannot look away from the people getting sick and dying in ICE custody, or from the shameful way our US government is treating human beings behind detention-center walls.
The warning signs are impossible to ignore: delayed medical care, dismissed symptoms, mishandled records, interrupted medications, and emergencies met by systems that too often fail the very people who have nowhere else to turn.
This is not only an immigration issue.
This is also a medical ethics emergency, and America’s medical associations cannot look away.
ICE’s internal death reviews reveal serious systemic failures. An investigation found that 27 of 33 deaths involved care below safe standards, highlighting urgent accountability needs.1
Twenty-seven out of thirty-three. We cannot read that number and move on.
Those were people. They were loved. They had families, histories, hopes, and lives that mattered, and their loss leaves families grieving and searching for answers.
And the crisis has grown.
A joint investigation by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights found that 52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of the Trump administration’s second term, from January 20, 2025 through June 4, 2026.2 3 Their analysis found that the mortality rate in ICE custody had climbed to its highest level in more than a decade. They also warned that ICE provides so little information to Congress, families, and the public that meaningful oversight becomes extraordinarily difficult.
Think about what that means.
When our government takes someone into custody, that person becomes completely dependent on the government for medical care. Families are forced to trust that their loved ones will receive necessary medications, adequate nutrition, mental-health care, emergency treatment, and competent medical attention.
Sometimes, they do not.
People get sicker.
Some die.
And families are left grieving, searching for answers, and wondering whether their loved one could have been saved.
Medical professionals understand exactly what delayed care can mean. They know what happens when warning signs are ignored, medications are withheld or interrupted, symptoms are dismissed, nutritional needs are neglected, records are unavailable, or emergency treatment comes too late.
So we have to ask a much bigger question:
What message do America’s medical associations send when the profession they represent is built around caring for human health, yet people in government custody can be deprived of adequate nutrition, necessary medications, and required medical care and they do nothing to publicly demand answers and accountability for the patients entrusted to their members’ care.
What does it say to doctors and nurses who entered healthcare believing that every human life deserves care, dignity, and protection?
The ethical commitments at the heart of medicine cannot stop at the detention-center door.
That is why silence from America’s medical institutions is unacceptable.
Medical associations have expertise. They have credibility. They have access to physicians, researchers, specialists, and public-health professionals whose voices carry enormous weight, and they have a moral obligation to act on this knowledge.
They must use that power.
We are calling on all national and state medical associations to investigate medical care in ICE detention, publicly release their findings, identify violations of accepted standards of care, demand independent access and oversight, and use their influence to push for immediate corrective action wherever people’s health and lives are being endangered.
No vague statements.
No quiet expressions of concern.
No looking the other way.
We need public findings, public accountability, and public pressure for change.
People trapped behind detention-center walls cannot simply leave when their healthcare fails them.
They need people on the outside willing to speak.
They need medical professionals willing to demand answers.
They need institutions willing to put human life above political convenience.
🩺 Take Action» Tell Medical Associations: Investigate ICE Detention Abuses, Publish the Findings, and Demand Action
Tell America’s medical associations to use their authority and credibility to expose dangerous conditions in ICE detention, publicly report what they find, and demand immediate action when care falls below accepted medical standards.
Silence shields broken systems. Transparency empowers people to demand accountability and can save lives, making it essential for medical associations to act.
Every person deserves dignity. Every person deserves care.
And every person in government custody deserves to come home alive.
Take Action
🩺 Take Action» Tell Medical Associations: Investigate ICE Detention Abuses, Publish the Findings, and Demand Action
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Laurie Woodward Garcia leads People Power United, a people-powered news source and movement community championing our rights, freedoms, the rule of law, and democracy.
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ice-detainee-deaths-22455046.php
https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/06/25/dying-in-detention/rising-deaths-in-an-expanding-us-immigration-detention-system
https://phr.org/our-work/resources/dying-in-detention/
There's been a letter this week that I sent, a prewrite. What I tend to do with prewrites is write a paragraph at the start. If I did that, I wrote, I am sure there are enough medical doctors of conscience to call out ICE. That was either in the subject line (if I changed that) or the first paragraph, if I wrote a personalized paragraph. It's concentration camps and we know it and it's hard to get people to see it for what it is. We keep at it, we never give up.
ICE is an Out Of Control Lawless Gang of Mercenaries serving Stephen Miller and this Corrupt Regime. No Accountability! No Consequences! That must change and every single member of ICE who commit CRIMES must be prosecuted