Immigration and Customs Enforcement has rewritten its national detention standards in ways that former officials, medical experts, and civil liberties advocates warn could weaken protections for tens of thousands of people in custody while benefiting the private prison companies and local jails paid to hold them.
The revised standards, released Monday, apply to for-profit contractors and jails that operate ICE detention facilities. ICE said the changes were developed with input from detention partners and were intended to streamline rules and “reduce the burden on our detention operators.” But several of the most consequential changes appear to shift responsibility and risk away from facility operators at a time when the detention system is already facing intense scrutiny over deaths, medical neglect, inadequate food, and other reported abuses.
Roughly 60,000 people are currently detained in ICE custody, according to the source material. The changes also come as ICE is receiving a major infusion of federal money, with more than half of the $70 billion immigration enforcement spending bill signed by President Donald Trump last week going to the agency. At least 50 individuals have died in ICE detention or shortly after since the start of Trump’s second term, according to the reporting provided.
The new standards allow facilities to rely more heavily on artificial intelligence tools for communication with detained people. Under the revisions, facilities may use machine-learning-based translation or generative AI for “noncritical communication” or “informal interactions with detainees.” The source material states that this could include giving and receiving information during intake, conversations in housing units, and responses to detainee grievances or concerns.
That language has alarmed correctional health experts because grievances are often the only formal way detainees can report urgent problems, including medical neglect, abuse, or unsafe conditions. Dr. Homer Venters, an expert on correctional health care, warned that grievances often include “very urgent or even emergent information such as when a patient has been denied lifesaving care.” He also raised concern that the rules do not make clear whether health assessments, which are used to identify medical and mental health needs, could be conducted through AI-supported communication.
ICE said the standards ensure contractors provide interpretation and translation services “at no cost to the detainees.” But the source material states that the revised standards eliminate mandates requiring in-person and telephone interpretation and translation services. That distinction is important. The issue is not only whether translation is technically available, but whether detained people can reliably communicate medical symptoms, safety threats, disability needs, or legal concerns through qualified human interpreters in high-stakes settings.
Dr. Sanjay Basu, a public health researcher who has studied ICE custody deaths, said the standards include “genuine improvements” to suicide prevention and mental health care. But he also warned that the broader direction of the revisions is “toward weaker standards governing a growing share of the detained population.”
Another change bars detention facilities from refusing to admit any detainee ICE sends them. Experts cited in the source material said that could prevent facilities from immediately declining to take people who are severely ill or disabled and whom the facility cannot safely accommodate. A related provision requires facilities to request that ICE transfer detainees they cannot serve elsewhere, but that process may take several days after the person has already been admitted.
The change could have major consequences for medical care and accountability. If a facility cannot meet a detainee’s needs but is required to accept that person anyway, responsibility for later harm may become harder to assign. Contractors may argue they followed ICE’s rules by admitting the person and requesting a transfer. Meanwhile, the person in custody may be left waiting in a setting unable to provide adequate care.
Michelle Brane, a former Department of Homeland Security ombudsman who oversaw immigration detention practices during part of the Biden administration, said the revisions are likely to worsen conditions. “100% it’s going to result in deterioration of already problematic conditions of detention,” Brane said. “It’s consistent with their general practice, which is to eliminate accountability and oversight. They are not concerned with people’s basic rights or safety of detainees.”
The standards also alter language around detainee labor programs, a long-running point of legal and political conflict. Detained people have for years been paid a minimum stipend of $1 per workday for jobs inside facilities. Advocates and detainees have challenged those programs in lawsuits, arguing that they amount to forced labor and that private contractors have used detained workers to keep facilities operating while avoiding normal wage obligations.
The revised standards state that detainees who participate in voluntary work programs are not employees and are not entitled to wages or benefits. They also bar facilities from paying above the longtime $1-per-day minimum stipend, which had been allowed under the previous standard. Carmen Iguina Gonzalez, an immigration detention expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the work can include cleaning dormitories, cutting hair, and other tasks that keep facilities running.
Dora Schriro, former director of ICE’s Office of Detention Policy and Planning during the Obama administration, said the new language “is a favor” to ICE’s for-profit contractors. The change could help companies such as GEO Group and CoreCivic defend against lawsuits seeking unpaid wages.
The source material states that The Washington Post reported GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison and detention companies, requested changes during the revision process that would benefit its business. GEO reportedly asked ICE to remove language requiring contractors to follow state and local laws regarding the treatment of detained people and to add language supporting its legal position that detainees are not employees. CoreCivic, another major private prison company, was also reportedly consulted during the revision process.
ICE implemented some of GEO Group’s requested changes, according to the source material, including waiving the $1-a-day pay requirement for detained workers and removing references to the requirement that prison companies comply with state and local laws.
The revisions place renewed scrutiny on the relationship between ICE and the private companies that profit from detention. GEO Group and CoreCivic each donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund in December 2024. Both companies have profited from Trump’s expansion of immigration detention during his second term. GEO Group has ICE as its largest customer.
The personnel ties are also significant. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan and ICE acting director David Venturella both previously worked for GEO Group. Venturella joined the Department of Homeland Security after leaving GEO Group, where he served as a senior executive overseeing detention centers and later worked as a consultant.
GEO Group is currently facing dozens of lawsuits, including multiple class action lawsuits in Washington, New Jersey, and Colorado. Those suits allege labor law violations, “deplorable” health conditions, beatings, violence, and retaliation by GEO Group staff. The new standards could reshape the legal environment around those claims by strengthening contractors’ arguments that detainees are not employees and that federal standards limit the application of state and local protections.
ICE has defended the revisions as a streamlining measure. The agency said it considered input from operators alongside “operational, legal and policy requirements” before finalizing the standards. It also said the new rules move closer to more relaxed standards used by the U.S. Marshals Service to hold pretrial federal inmates in jails.
But immigration detention is civil detention, not criminal punishment. Many people held by ICE are detained while immigration proceedings move forward. The decision to align ICE standards more closely with jail rules used for pretrial federal inmates raises questions about whether the federal government is normalizing a more punitive detention model while scaling up the number of people held.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former DHS and ICE official and detention standards expert, said ICE could use its increased budget to improve conditions rather than weaken rules. She recalled that under prior administrations, she pushed ICE facilities to add soccer fields and other recreation and visitation improvements with leftover money.
Instead, she said the new standards point in the opposite direction. “Their goal is to make it easier for the jail operators,” Trickler-McNulty said. “No longer are they trying to make sure the focus is on the detainees and their care and the experience in custody.”
The policy shift shows how detention standards can affect far more than paperwork. They determine who must be admitted, how medical needs are communicated, whether grievances are handled through human interpretation or AI tools, how detained labor is treated, and how much protection contractors have when conditions lead to lawsuits.
For private prison companies, the revisions may reduce costs and legal exposure. For detained people, advocates warn, the changes may mean less access to language assistance, greater medical risk, weaker oversight, and continued labor at $1 per day inside facilities that depend on their work.
Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen said the $1-a-day system traces back to a 1950 policy that was never meaningfully updated. “The $1 a day pay program is an affront to every working individual,” Gilbert said in a statement. “The new standard appears to be intended as a gift to the for-profit contractors running detention centers, based on recent media reports. These corporations, which have seen record profits under the Trump administration’s mass immigration detention policy, are now facing lawsuits demanding they pay detainees the state minimum wage.”
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