\n<\/p>\n
U.S. Immigration and<\/span> Customs Enforcement agents and staff have administered what experts said was shoddy medical treatment to at least a dozen detainees at its Batavia, New York, facility in the past two years, according to the findings of a new investigation.<\/p>\n Serious injuries went untreated, medications were denied or scaled back, and needed medical appointments were delayed at the ICE detention center, the state\u2019s largest, located near Buffalo.<\/p>\n In one case, a Nigerian migrant arrived in February at the Batavia ICE detention facility suffering frostbite. A doctor who provided emergency care ordered that he see a specialist within a week before releasing him into ICE\u2019s custody. Agents in Batavia never took him to the appointment. By the time he saw a doctor, it was too late to save his fingers; parts of six were later amputated.<\/p>\n In another case, a Gambian man<\/a> with numerous heart issues was detained by ICE in February after he showed up for a routine check-in appointment. The man went two weeks without his medications. He suffered a stroke-like syndrome as a result, according to a doctor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt certainly appears to be a violation of ICE\u2019s own detention standards.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Attorneys and other detainee advocates said in interviews that the cases documented by this reporting are indicative of a wider problem. And a 2023 investigation by NPR<\/a> found similar problems across ICE\u2019s network of detention centers.<\/p>\n Sophie Dalsimer, an attorney with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest<\/a> who has studied medical treatment in ICE facilities in New York, said the agency\u2019s treatment of detainees amounts to \u201cmedical neglect in a legal sense.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe lack of medical care, and with ICE being deliberately indifferent to people\u2019s medical needs, could, in many of these instances, rise to the level of a constitutional violation,\u201d she said. \u201cIt certainly appears to be a violation of ICE\u2019s own detention standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Those standards<\/a> include providing prescribed medications, timely responses to medical complaints, and hospitalization as needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Batavia facility, officially called the Buffalo (Batavia) Service Processing Center, lacks a doctor and dentist<\/a> working on-site, this investigation found.That\u2019s for a 650-bed detention center that\u2019s been overcapacity for months<\/a> due to the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown<\/a> on migrants.<\/p>\n A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report<\/a> published in June noted that \u201cstaffing shortages caused delays in dental and off-site specialty care.\u201d Between September 2024 and February 2025, the report said, ICE had a 150-person backlog of detainees who required outside medical treatment and were waiting for appointments.<\/p>\n That problem was noted previously in a 2018 Civil Rights and Civil Liberties investigation<\/a> into medical care at Batavia. That audit gave the facility a passing grade but also found \u201cseveral examples of detainees waiting for various specialty health care services for more than a month.\u201d In one case, a detainee waited 168 days for an endocrinology appointment. In another case, the auditor found that a detainee requested an outside doctor appointment for blood in his stool, but that ICE deleted the request from its internal system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just freak luck that no one has died in Batavia in the last two years,\u201d said Aaron Krupp, the regional coordinator at Justice for Migrant Families<\/a>. \u201cBut the way that they have treated people, people really easily could have died.\u201d<\/p>\n This story is based on a review of nearly 600 pages of court filings from seven lawsuits, medical records, and other documents, as well as interviews with a dozen people including detainees, attorneys, and other experts. Neither ICE nor DHS, its parent agency, responded to detailed questions and requests for about each case in this story.<\/p>\n Chidi Nwagbo moved from Nigeria to the U.S. in 1988, living for 37 years as a \u201cmodel resident\u201d with no criminal history, according to his attorney. When Donald Trump took office in January, he said in a July interview, \u201cthings just went helter-skelter, like raids everywhere, and I didn\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n He made a plan to move to Canada to live with his brother and paid a smuggler $2,000 to shepherd him and three other migrants into Quebec. The final leg of the journey required them to cross the border on foot, but Nwagbo said he was unprepared for freezing temperatures and waist-deep snow. He and a woman in his party eventually called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to rescue them.<\/p>\n After a hospital stint, he was released into federal immigration custody on February 10 with orders from a doctor that he see a specialist at Kessler Burn and Trauma Center in Rochester, New York, to treat his frostbitten fingers within a week. Nwagbo\u2019s medical records, which he shared for this investigation, show the physician made a referral to a specific specialist. ICE never took him to the appointment, according to Nwagbo\u2019s medical records. By the time he saw a different doctor at a different practice 16 days later, his fingers were too far gone. Amputations would be necessary, the doctor told him. He\u2019s now missing portions of six fingers.<\/p>\n \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have lost my fingers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The case of Tim, another Nigerian, is similar.<\/p>\n In April this year, Tim, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution against his family, was days away from finishing a federal prison sentence for a fraud conviction when he fell down a set of stairs. He suffered a major concussion and was taken to a Massachusetts hospital. Upon discharge, he was prescribed nine drugs, ordered to attend inpatient physical therapy, and transferred to the Batavia detention center. Once at the detention center, he went at least a month without medication and received only one physical therapy session before being deported this summer. By that point, Tim required a walker.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI suffer a lot of mental health issues. I cannot sleep. I am on zero medications.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very traumatized at the moment,\u201d he said during an interview in May, several weeks after his injury. \u201cI suffer a lot of mental health issues. I cannot sleep. I am on zero medications.\u201d<\/p>\n Reached recently by email, Tim said his condition has only deteriorated since his return to Nigeria.<\/p>\n He wrote, \u201cI am dire need of a comprehensive mental health\/neurological treatment in order to get my life back to where it used to be before my detention in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n ICE, in some cases, denied detainees access to needed medications. In other cases, the agency allowed lapses in their medication schedules.<\/p>\n That was the case with Sering Ceesay, the Gambian man with heart conditions. He was detained by ICE in New York City<\/a> on February 19 after what he expected to be a routine immigration appointment.<\/p>\n Instead, ICE placed him in shackles and chains and transported him to Batavia. He went two weeks without his medications. On March 4, he attended a legal clinic hosted by attorneys from the legal advocates at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, who quickly realized Ceesay needed medical attention, according to court filings from a later lawsuit by Ceesay alleging he was being held in violation of his rights.<\/p>\n \u201cI was feeling very weak, and my entire body just hurt,\u201d Ceesay said in a filing. \u201cI felt like when I had my heart attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo later ordered Ceesay released<\/a>, but not before he was diagnosed with a stroke-like syndrome because he had missed so many days of his medicine.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nInjuries Go Untreated<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Medications Denied<\/strong><\/h2>\n