New ICE Records Highlight Detention Practices, Spark Debate

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released new documents on the 2026 detention center standards prompted accusations of torture from media outlets on the left. Though AllSides was not able to find coverage of these accusations on the right, right-leaning outlets have recently done deep dives into potential criminal histories of some of the migrants in the detention centers in question.

Forced Medical Treatment: The Guardian (Left bias) reviewed documents from the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC) that revealed that an unnamed migrant who began a hunger strike "was subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws." The Guardian reported that it "remains unclear" how many forced treatments for detainees participating in hunger strikes have been administered and that ICE has not revealed what sort of forced treatments were administered. Many healthcare associations and international human rights groups describe force feeding and other forced medical treatments as "torture" due to their associated risks, according to The Guardian.

Extensive Solitary Confinement: Daily Beast (Left) reported on the Fiscal Year 2026 detention statistics that ICE released, which revealed that the average stay in solitary confinement for "vulnerable detainees" reached 63 days, which Daily Beast wrote is "five times the average of 12 days in early 2022, and more than four times the U.N.'s 15-day threshold for treatment that can amount to torture." The Daily Beast highlighted that, in addition to the high levels of solitary confinement, ICE is "refusing almost every asylum parole request," leading to higher numbers of immigrants in detention centers.

Immigrants With Violent Crimes: Daily Wire (Right) highlighted one immigrant in detention, Martin Soto, whose "sob story" the outlet claims fueled a hunger strike within the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Daily Wire analyzed police reports that revealed Soto had previously been arrested for domestic violence, including striking an unnamed female victim. The former ICE New York field office deputy director told Daily Wire, "The public was told a good man was grabbed by ICE while buying diapers. The record says he was arrested by Kearny police, handed to Hudson County, taken into ICE custody, and detained at Delaney Hall while charged with assaulting the very woman who then made him a headline… This is the pattern: a sympathetic claim built to go viral, while the facts sit unread in a file."

Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.