What are the living conditions in ICE detention centers compared to federal prisons?
Executive summary
ICE detention centers vary widely in size and management, but reporting shows many operate like prisons—secured facilities with strict controls, frequent overcrowding, and persistent problems in health care and oversight—while federal prisons can offer different resources and regimes that are sometimes reported as both better and worse than ICE custody depending on the facility and the individual’s experience [1] [2] [3].
1. What “living conditions” means in practice: prison-like regimes with civil-status differences
People in ICE detention are commonly housed in secured, prison-like settings where movement is controlled, uniforms are worn, and daily life is regimented—conditions that researchers say are often similar to jails and prisons even though immigration detention is civil, not criminal, custody [1]. That civil status matters: detainees do not have many criminal-law protections (for example, no guaranteed government-appointed counsel), which shapes access to legal remedies for substandard living conditions [1].
2. Overcrowding and the patchwork of facility types
ICE’s network is a sprawling mix of private prisons, local jails, and federal sites, with more than 200 facilities tracked by advocates and a heavy reliance on privately run centers [4]. Independent capacity analyses find that multiple ICE-contracted facilities exceeded their contractual capacity in FY2025, and that exceeding “contractual capacity” can translate into overcrowded, degraded conditions—an operational pattern rather than one-day spikes [2]. The system’s rapid expansion has included reopening dormant prisons and using military bases and hotels, increasing the geographic isolation and variability of conditions [5] [6].
3. Health care, deaths, and documented abuses
Healthcare and safety problems are repeatedly flagged: watchdogs and health policy groups report inadequate compliance with health and safety standards, insufficient health care, and limited oversight in many ICE facilities [7]. Civil rights groups document accounts of physical and sexual abuse and point to preventable deaths—most recently numerous deaths in 2025 and reports of fatalities and medical neglect at large new sites like Fort Bliss [8] [9]. Public-health literature similarly notes rising recognition of civil and human-rights abuses and preventable in-custody deaths in immigration detention [1].
4. Oversight, standards, and the accountability gap
ICE points to multiple detention standards and daily on-site compliance reviews intended to identify and correct deficiencies [10]. Yet advocacy organizations, reporting, and policy briefs argue that oversight has been eroded even as detention expanded, that private contractors have strong financial incentives to maximize bed use, and that accountability gaps persist—factors that can blunt the effectiveness of stated standards [11] [4] [12].
5. How federal prisons compare: resource differences, regime differences, and anecdotal variance
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities operate under a different authority and historically different standards; at times ICE has housed detainees in federal prisons when capacity was strained [3]. Some detainees and advocates say conditions in certain federal prisons were better—medical access or programming—while others report federal facilities as worse, and BOP staff historically described housing ICE detainees as difficult during past collaborations [3]. In short, federal prisons are not uniformly better or worse: comparisons depend on the specific federal facility, the ICE site, and the individual’s needs and legal status [3] [13].
6. Bottom line: variance is the rule; systemic problems tilt the balance
Both ICE detention centers and federal prisons can be austere, regimented places; however, the immigration system’s mix of private contractors, rapid expansion into nontraditional sites, reduced oversight, and civil-law regime means detainees often face greater uncertainty, limited legal protections, and documented gaps in health and safety that advocacy groups and public-health analysts say make ICE custody uniquely risky for many people [4] [6] [7] [1]. Federal prisons offer a different institutional framework that in some cases provides more stable services, but anecdotal reports and BOP experience show federal custody can also be harsher or less attentive depending on the site, so any direct comparison must be qualified by facility-level evidence [3] [13].