As immigration detention rolls swell to their highest levels in half a decade, the federal apparatus meant to keep those facilities accountable has quietly contracted — leaving significant stretches of time between reviews at dozens of sites, according to inspection records examined by CBS News. Five large facilities, each holding 500 or more detainees, had no inspection on file whatsoever as of late June. Another 15 comparably sized sites had gone more than a year without a review. Researchers who track conditions in immigration custody describe the pattern as a calculated rollback of oversight mechanisms that were never especially robust to begin with.
The numbers behind the detention surge are striking. Between last February and April of this year, the roster of facilities holding ICE detainees nearly doubled — jumping from 104 to 203 — as the Trump administration pressed forward with an aggressive deportation agenda. That expansion has pushed the detained population to heights not seen since 2020. The rapid growth of the network has outpaced the inspection infrastructure meant to monitor it.
The pullback in scrutiny is not incidental. In February 2025, border czar Tom Homan told a sheriffs' conference that the administration planned to scale down federal inspections — a move Reuters reported was designed to entice local law enforcement agencies into making their jails available to ICE. Fewer oversight requirements, the thinking went, would lower the barrier for sheriffs reluctant to invite federal scrutiny of their facilities.
Trouble inside some of these sites has spilled into public view. At Delaney Hall in New Jersey, detainees launched a hunger strike in May, citing spoiled food and inadequate medical attention; demonstrators camped outside the facility for weeks in protest. Separately, a government review around the same period flagged dangerous conditions at Camp East Montana in El Paso, which functions as ICE's largest single detention site.
What has changed structurally is significant. A 2018 report by the DHS watchdog found that ICE's Office of Detention Oversight was not visiting facilities frequently enough to verify that cited violations were actually being fixed. Congress responded by boosting funding and mandating semiannual inspections, to be completed by the close of fiscal year 2021. That framework was dismantled last year when ICE restructured its approach: dedicated facilities — those used exclusively for ICE detainees — now face annual reviews, while county jails and other non-dedicated sites are examined only once every two years. Facilities in the non-dedicated category with fewer than 50 detainees gained the option of a biennial self-inspection, even if they had never previously been subject to any routine review at all.
Dr. Annette Decker, an assistant professor at UCLA's medical school who co-authored a 2024 paper advocating for inspection reforms and has researched health outcomes among detained individuals, said the reduced cadence carries tangible dangers. She said that many facilities have deficiencies and require frequent reassessments to ensure those deficiencies are being addressed. She said it is concerning that inspections are now less frequent, because that creates a large time gap between evaluations to ensure that healthcare and other conditions are being met.
The CBS News review of inspection records going back to 2019 found that at least one deficiency was flagged in roughly 90 percent of all completed reviews — a body of problems encompassing staff failures to conduct required suicide-watch checks, food stored at temperatures that posed health risks, and incident reports that were improperly documented.
DHS pushed back on the characterization that oversight has weakened. One agency spokesperson told CBS News that inspection frequency is calibrated according to facility type, detention capacity, and operational function, and that ICE maintains a robust, multi-layered compliance program designed to promote compliance with ICE's contractually obligated detention standards. A second spokesperson said the revised model allows ICE to allocate oversight resources based on facility type and operational complexity, and confirmed that all dedicated ICE facilities, regardless of population size, are scheduled for inspections this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Critics note, however, that the dedicated-versus-non-dedicated distinction does not reliably track actual population size. ICE's own data show five non-dedicated facilities each averaging more than 500 detainees — figures on par with many dedicated sites that receive more frequent attention under the current rules.
Funding streams for oversight have also become uneven. A spending measure enacted in April covering DHS agencies other than ICE and Customs and Border Protection allocated $20 million for detention facility inspections by the department's Inspector General. The separate appropriations bill funding ICE and CBP, passed this month, includes no parallel requirement for ODO inspections.
Skepticism about whether inspections produce real change predates the current administration. Even during the semiannual review period, a Government Accountability Office assessment concluded that the ODO had no dependable method for determining whether its inspection program was actually safeguarding detainee health and safety. Decker observed that deficiencies are frequently documented at facilities without any repercussions following. Federal statute technically obligates ICE to terminate a facility's contract after two consecutive failures, yet the CBS News analysis found that some sites have accumulated multiple serious deficiencies without ever receiving an outright failing grade.
Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, offers a concrete illustration of how findings and consequences can diverge. The dedicated contracted facility, which houses an average of roughly 2,000 people, was rated acceptable/adequate at its most recent inspection in March 2025 — even though inspectors identified 12 deficiencies, including two classified as priority-level concerns related to suicide prevention. Since that inspection, the county coroner told CBS News, two detainees have died by suicide: one in April and one last June.
A DHS spokesperson disputed the notion that ICE fails to hold facilities to account, writing that ICE works directly with the responsible field office and facility operator to correct identified deficiencies and bring the facility into compliance with ICE detention standards.
Trend data from the CBS News analysis complicate any simple narrative. Deficiency counts per inspection declined year over year beginning in 2019 — the period that opened with the move to twice-yearly reviews — and that downward trend has persisted into 2025. Yet the same dataset reveals that deficiency totals are now climbing specifically at larger facilities, raising concern that reduced oversight may be producing consequences precisely where the stakes are highest.
CBS News' analysis is based on inspection reports reviewed through late June 2025.