ICE abuse of detainees in Batavia facility

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Recent federal audits of the ICE detention facility in Batavia have documented instances of inhumane treatment of detainees by guards.

The audits, conducted in 2023 and last year, found instances of excessive use of force, the shackling of detainees held in solitary confinement for the little time they were allowed out of their cells, and the use of physician assistants to perform dental work on detainees.

Former detainees and their representatives paint an even darker picture of conditions inside the facility.

Guards beating up detainees is not uncommon, they said. Solitary confinement is a frequent punishment, sometimes in lengthy durations that meet the state’s definition of torture. Detainees, many of whom spend at least 18 hours a day locked in their cells, are paid $1 a day to perform maintenance work, a practice that is the subject of a federal lawsuit.

Detainees upset with their treatment — specifically the 18-hour-per-day lockup and a revocation of phone privileges — went on a hunger strike last June, which they said resulted in threats of force and their exile to solitary confinement. Attorneys representing some of those 40 individuals filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Homeland Security the following month.

“It’s supposed to be civil detention but it’s run, in many ways, like a maximum security, criminal facility,” said Sarah Gillman, the U.S. litigation director at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and an attorney who has represented detainees held in Batavia.

ICE officials refused an interview request from Investigative Post. In a statement, however, a spokesperson said the agency treats all detainees “humanely.”

“The agency continuously reviews and enhances civil detention operations to ensure aliens are treated humanely, protected from harm, provided appropriate medical and mental health care, and receive the rights and protections to which they are entitled,” spokesperson Chrissy Cuttita said. 

As the Trump administration ramps up efforts to detain and deport immigrants, more individuals could end up at the Buffalo Service Processing Center, as the Batavia ICE facility is formally known, meaning more people could be subjected to the harsh conditions inside.

Those conditions, however, transcend politics, one advocate stressed.

“The conditions being lousy at Batavia is not a partisan issue, and it’s not about the president,” Aaron Krupp, regional coordinator with the advocacy group Justice for Migrant Families. “They have been this bleak since the facility opened in the 1990s, before the existence of ICE.”

Criminal treatment for civil detainees

As of Feb. 8, 544 people are detained in the 650-capacity ICE facility, among the most that have been held there in recent years. Data shows  detentions spiked in 2019, during Trump’s first term, fell dramatically during the pandemic years, and began climbing again during Biden’s final year in the White House.

Detainees are held in one of nine housing blocks. Some spend up to 18 hours a day in a cell with bunk beds and a metal toilet. Others sleep in open-air cubicles. 

While some there have served state or federal prison sentences for serious crimes, everyone detained at the facility is there on a civil immigration offense.

In interviews, former detainees described the conditions as worse than the prisons they had previously spent time in.

One South Asian man came to the United States when George W. Bush was in office. After a stint in state prison, he was slated for deportation.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I’m glad my time is done. Now they’re gonna just deport me. Let’s get this over,’” said the man, whom Investigative Post is calling Ali to protect his identity.

Instead, he found himself languishing in Batavia, which he found “far more stressful” than his time in state prison.

Though he’d finished his prison sentence — and had been released early on account of good behavior — Ali was classified as a security risk by ICE and required to stay in his cell for 18 hours a day.

“For the last eight years of my sentence, I was literally in college, where I was taking more than three classes every semester,” he said.

In order to get out of 18-hour-per-day lockup, Ali said, he had to get on a waiting list to get a job performing menial labor in the facility. He was paid  $1 per day, which was credited to his commissary account. 

Akima Global Services, the contractor hired by ICE to staff and operate the facility, is currently being sued for that practice. Attorneys representing the company did not respond to a request for comment but, in court filings, have denied any wrongdoing.

The facility, including solitary confinement, is kept at frigid temperatures, Ali and others said, with detainees issued only a short-sleeve jumpsuit and a single blanket to keep them warm.

The few freedoms allowed detainees were limited, Ali said — or expensive. A half-hour video call costs detainees $6.50, he said. Akima provides detainees with internet-enabled tablets, but not enough for everyone, Ali said, leading to arguments and fights. Such conflicts led to guards using force and restraints on detainees. Solitary confinement was a frequent punishment.

One incident, Ali said, involved a man vomiting in his cell. Guards ordered the man’s cellmate to clean up the mess, which he protested. The conflict escalated until a detainee — by accident, Ali said — elbowed a guard.

“They interpreted it as he assaulted him, and they just jumped on him, and then they beat him up,” Ali said. “The moment there is an opportunity like that, [guards] will definitely do that. They are letting you know basically, ‘Don’t mess with us. If you do, then we’re gonna respond.’”

Krupp, of Justice for Migrant Families, said he knows Ali well, had heard him tell similar stories and vouched for their veracity.

Another former detainee, Mohammed Saleh, said he also witnessed guards beating up detainees on a regular basis. Saleh, who served a nearly three-decade prison sentence before being deported to Jordan in 2023, said such incidents occurred “every other day” at the Batavia facility.

In one incident, he said, guards “just came from nowhere. They came running and jumped and beat [a man] up, plucked him up, took him to isolation for a month.”

“[If guards] suspect that [someone is] disrespecting officers or arguing with officers or arguing with somebody else, they just come at him, jump at him and take him to isolation.”

“They treat us like criminals.”

Civil rights complaints

On several occasions in recent years, attorneys representing Batavia detainees have taken legal action in protest of the conditions at the detention center.

The subject of one complaint occurred in June, when around 40 detainees staged a hunger strike. In response, guards threatened to revoke privileges and lock detainees in solitary confinement.

“I began to eat after the officer told me that if we do not eat for dinner, I and others would be taken to solitary, we would lose our job, and we would remain in solitary,” one detainee told lawyers, according to the civil rights complaint. “So I began to eat because I was afraid.”

The free phone call policy that was revoked was first instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic to replace in-person visitation. After the pandemic subsided, detainees were charged $5 for a 45-minute call.

Other civil rights complaints have concerned ICE’s use of solitary confinement.

Other abuses – including ICE dropping off released detainees at a Batavia gas station with no resources — were detailed in a 2022 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that also remains pending.

Audits raise concerns

Audits, too, highlighted concerns about the conditions at the Batavia detention center.

In one, in which auditors were on site in June and October 2023, they noted that any time detainees were let out of solitary confinement, guards shackled them with restraints, even when doing so wasn’t necessary.

The auditors “found facility staff routinely applied restraints to detainees in [disciplinary segregation] prior to exiting their cells and not exclusively as a precaution against escape,” the report stated.

That ran counter to ICE’s own policy, the auditors noted, stating that use of the practice was a “repeat deficiency.” A follow-up audit, in May 2024, stated that ICE had changed policy to using restraints on detainees “only if they posed a safety risk.”

Auditors were again on site in October and found that guards were routinely using force on detainees, even if they posed no threat to themselves or others. In three cases reviewed by the auditors, guards immediately “deployed chemical agents, entered the rooms and forcibly removed the detainees” without taking time “to assess the possibility of resolving the situation without resorting to force.”

Other deficiencies included ICE officers not having proper bus driving training before transporting detainees, not providing visitation hours over the phone and slow-walking responses to detainee grievances.

ICE policy, the auditors said, requires officers to respond to grievance reports within five days. In Batavia, detainees were waiting nearly two weeks. 

Gillman, the attorney with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, described the conditions at the facility as “punitive.”

“It’s a unique situation at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility,” she said.

“What we have heard across the board from people who have been subjected to criminal custody … is that the conditions at Batavia are worse than anything they’ve ever experienced in a criminal setting.”

J. Dale Shoemaker