Voters in the United States are approaching the midterm elections with a host of concerns, a topic I recently covered. However, the corporate news media is more focused on culture wars and faux red-scare panic about so-called “democratic socialists” than it is on illegal wars, kidnapping world leaders, collective punishment against entire nations for refusing to bow to the U.S. or Israel, or the increasingly dangerous militarized federal police force powered by an ever-growing surveillance state that is wreaking havoc in communities across the country.
If we were to hold power to account, enough news is being ignored to fill an entire 24-hour news cycle rather than having pundits speculate about what may or may not happen. But corporate news telling the truth about what the U.S. does is frowned upon, largely due to its owners, who also benefit from oppressive U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Police brutality, federal agents targeting innocent citizens and noncitizens alike, warmongering, and the mass starvation of Cubans, Afghans, Venezuelans, Iranians, and many more are broadly ignored.
Driven by nationalism and greed, often hidden behind religion, corporate news is ignoring the atrocities happening on U.S. streets. As with police brutality, they only report on the issue when people die; when it’s too late. Rather than focus on the system that made loss of life possible, pundits will come from all corners of society to feign outrage as if the deaths are isolated issues. The inhumanity of detention centers, like prisons, is also ignored. Beatings and sexual assaults by federal agents, like police, are pushed aside in favor of more politically focused, biased coverage of more divisive and hyperbolic culture wars.
Meanwhile, two recent reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General (DHSOIG) highlight many of the problems we’re seeing today. The first report is titled “Unannounced Inspection of ICE’s Florida Soft-Sided Facility (“Alligator Alcatraz”) in Ochopee, Florida.” It shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to comply with both federal and state prison standards.
“Overall, we found the facility complied with Intake and Use of Force standards but did not comply with standards related to: Environmental Health and Safety; Special Management Units; Medical Care; Food Service; Personal Hygiene; and Recreation… Of note, we found that between July 17, 2025, and January 18, 2026, FSSF confined 79 detainees in small metal enclosures – each offering about 18 square feet of floor space – for periods ranging from several minutes to nearly 2 hours.”
DHS refused to be held responsible for the Alligator Alcatraz facility and instead blamed the State of Florida, which the agency argued was detaining migrants under authorities delegated by 287g agreements. The agreements authorize local and state law enforcement to act as immigration enforcement agents, despite having little to no understanding of immigration law.
The second report is titled “Results of an Unannounced Inspection of ICE’s Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida” and covers much of what we already know about that facility. Krome is notorious for being overcrowded, providing little to no healthcare, cramming migrants in inhumane conditions (forcing many to sleep on the floor), and a lack of adequate food.
“On the first day of our visit, there were 1,102 detainees at Krome, which had a maximum capacity of 882,” the report reads. “This led to several issues, including overcrowded intake hold rooms and housing units, detainees being held in intake for more than 12 hours, and in one extended intake facility, the commingling of detainees of different risk classifications,” the report continued. “Housing detainees in crowded conditions for extended periods of time jeopardizes the safe and orderly operations within the facility.”
The Krome facility report also shows that ICE concurred with DHSOIG’s recommendations, but its extensive history of failing to meet basic standards indicates a systemwide problem that can not and should not be overlooked. ICE has previously agreed with DHSOIG inspection reports, and DHSOIG has routinely stated that it was satisfied with ICE’s actions to address the issues; however, the problems persist, as noted in the long history reports detailing these problems.
ICE operates more than 200 facilities across the country, and the vast majority have been found to have had similar issues. Camp East Montana, located on Fort Bliss in Texas, has been the subject of several investigations over migrants’ deaths and allegations of physical and sexual assault, neglect, and a host of other human rights abuses. A report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Watch details the conditions.
“Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found that people detained at Camp East Montana endured conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, excessive use of force including one extrajudicial killing, life-threatening medical neglect, barriers to legal representation, and coercive third-country removals,” the report reads. “Together, these abuses violate fundamental protections under US and international human rights law”
The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, has also been the subject of much scrutiny. Dilley is the only facility dedicated to detaining migrant families with children. While many of the same issues, such as medical neglect, poor quality food, and abuse, are also reported in the Texas facility, there’s an added element: the prolonged detention of migrant children beyond 20 days, in violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement.
The Flores Settlement Agreement is a 1997 consent decree, setting nationwide minimum standards for the detention, treatment, and release of immigrant children in U.S. government custody. The agreement, which has been upheld multiple times, mandates safe and sanitary facilities, requires the least restrictive setting possible, and requires the expedited release of migrant children to family members of licensed programs for children.
A report from RAICES and Human Rights First details the conditions inside Dilley.
“The profound and irreparable harm inflicted on thousands of children, the due process violations, weaponization of family separation, and the denial of critical medical care make it clear that this policy must be immediately reversed,” the report reads. “Concrete measures must be taken to ensure that family incarceration is not resurrected in the future.”
Dilley, along with many other facilities, also houses pregnant women who have reported receiving substandard or no prenatal care. That lack of care, alongside a record number of pregnant women being detained across the country, led to at least 18 miscarriages in the first nine months of Trump’s second term. The total number of miscarriages is unknown, as government documents obtained by The Guardian show that the government has had no data on them since October 2025 and has lost count of how many miscarriages have occurred.
The Guardian details several stories of miscarriages.
“Laura, 21, was in the second trimester of a high-risk pregnancy when she was sent to the Dilley detention center in Texas,” the Guardian story reads. “Now, still detained and approaching her third trimester, she’s experiencing persistent abdominal pain and bleeding – and says she hasn’t been allowed to see an OB-GYN.”
While all of this is happening behind barbed wire fences and high walls, ICE agents are still violently assaulting innocent noncitizens and citizens every day, using the power of the growing surveillance state to track people and cause harm. The U.S. is deporting Latinos to various countries around the world, despite their home countries offering to receive them. The situation has become so volatile that even Trump sycophants running to be reelected are speaking out due to losing support from their constituencies.
While some MAGA lawmakers may be speaking out now, it should be noted that they willingly voted to grant Trump the powers he’s weaponizing against nonwhite groups across the country and an ever-growing surveillance state. That surveillance state, born of the Patriot Act, is being built under the guise of anti-terrorism and anti-immigration efforts, but is increasingly used against U.S. citizens to monitor their speech online and their daily behavior throughout their lives.
This entire system can potentially be turned against U.S. citizens, just like the surveillance state has been turned against U.S. society. It’s less a question of “if” than of “when.” What the U.S. government is willing to do to others, it is willing to do to you. History has proven that time and again. No one is safe from any of this, citizen or otherwise. More voters are waking up to that reality every day.
The social anxiety felt across the country from the issues immigration enforcement has brought to the forefront has been noted by so many outspoken voters across the political spectrum. With elections on the horizon, those in Congress who voted for this are on their heels over these issues, and anyone running for office would be a fool to ignore it. If there was ever a time to punch back and push hard against the explosion of authoritarian policies, it’s now.
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