Immigrant Rights Advocates Send Letter to ICE Documenting Dangerous Medical Conditions and Limited Access to Legal Counsel for People Detained at North Lake Processing Center

The ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) sent a letter to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Detroit Field Office detailing documented accounts of dangerous medical conditions and limited access to legal counsel for people detained at North Lake Processing Center. The letter also urges ICE to comply with constitutional requirements and federal detention standards with regard to medical care and access to legal counsel.

Though North Lake has been open less than a year, there have been repeated reports of people detained in the facility who have been refused both emergency and routine medical care, follow-up care after hospitalization, access to prescription medications, or have been required to pay for necessary medications. The facility and its staff have fallen dangerously short of both constitutional mandates and federal detention standards, putting the health – and even the lives – of the people detained there at serious risk. Last December, one man died while at North Lake reportedly due to complications from untreated diabetes while in custody.

Below are some of the documented instances of people detained facing dangerous medical neglect at North Lake (pseudonyms are used to protect people detained from potential retaliation for sharing their story):

• Jane Doe: Jane Doe has had high blood pressure for 10 years and takes medication for it. She experienced a medical emergency consistent with a hypertensive crisis after failing to receive her prescribed blood pressure medication on time; she had expected to receive her medication at 5pm, but did not receive it. Hours later, Ms. Doe began having heart palpitations and felt her head pounding. She banged on her cell door and called to staff for her medicine, but was ignored. Ms. Doe pointed at her heart to indicate to staff that she was having heart palpitations. Staff mocked her by making heart shapes back at her with their hands, but no one came to her aid. Other women in her pod called out for staff but also were ignored. Ms. Doe started feeling dizzy, felt pain in her legs, and collapsed. The guards did not check on Ms. Doe for nearly three hours, at which point, her blood pressure was 229/134, well beyond the threshold of a hypertensive emergency. She was taken to the hospital in shackles despite barely being conscious.
• Jane Doe 2: Jane Doe 2 alerted medical staff at North Lake that she had a lump on her breast and requested an appointment for a diagnostic. Her medical records reflect that on seven different occasions, she requested a mammogram from medical staff—at one point, her records state that she told the medical staff at North Lake that she is “going to die here, waiting for a mammogram.” Medical staff repeatedly told her they would schedule an appointment for her and noted in her medical records that she needed a mammogram. An ACLU attorney repeatedly wrote to North Lake about Ms. Doe 2’s health concerns and provided an expert medical opinion that screening is needed, but those communications went unanswered until the day after Ms. Doe 2 had been transferred to another detention facility and did not indicate that she had received care. Doe 2 also reported that she has fainted at North Lake at least three times. While she was taken to the hospital the first time she fainted, on the two subsequent occasions when she fainted, Ms. Doe 2 was only given ibuprofen.
• John Doe 2: John Doe 2 reported that he was experiencing weakness on one side of his body and suffered a seizure, resulting in a six-day hospitalization. At the hospital, the doctor recommended physical therapy. After being discharged and returning to North Lake, even though , Mr. Doe 2 reported that he was not provided with follow-up care. Staff at the facility told him he was “fine” and did not require further treatment, despite the doctor’s instructions and the fact that Mr. Doe 2 continued having issues on the impacted side of his body. Although he to walk, he was afraid to raise alarms about his continuing health problems, as he had seen other people detained get placed in solitary confinement after reporting health issues.
• John Doe 5: Another individual, John Doe 5, became non-verbal due to lack of adequate mental health care. Mr. Doe 5 was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in his country of origin. Before being detained, he resided with family and his mental health was stable. His mental health sharply declined since his detention, and even the immigration judge assigned to his case noted the change. Mr. Doe 5 began exhibiting signs of extreme distress while at North Lake. Initially he was still communicating with his mother, but since December 2025, Mr. Doe 5 no longer calls his mother and has been unable to speak or communicate with gestures, and is unresponsive to his surroundings. We were just informed after today’s briefing that Mr. Doe 5 was moved to a dedicated medical facility in order to receive additional care, confirming that North Lake was not equipped to handle his needs over the past 8 months.

The facility also imposes significant limitations on attorney access. This includes North Lake only allowing one hour per day for virtual and telephone meetings between clients and attorneys even for complex cases, failing to provide private in-person meeting space for clients and legal counsel, and restricting attorney access to the facility and their clients based on an arbitrary and unwritten dress code. Legal counsel must also re-clear security between every single client, despite not leaving the secured perimeter, an inefficiency that limits the number of clients lawyers can see on a single visit to the remote facility. Also, due to staffing and scheduling failures, people detained have arrived late to life-changing judicial proceedings or missed them altogether.

The letter outlines several ways North Lake can improve medical care and legal access for people detained, including:

Medical:

• Systematically screen and consider for release medically vulnerable people detained whose needs exceed North Lake’s current healthcare capacity.
• Commission an independent medical audit by experts in correctional health to identify the causes of deficient medical care, and implement a plan to correct the identified issues.
• Implement a mandatory protocol for immediate medical response to emergency calls from all housing units.

Legal:

• Cease restricting the length of attorney-client virtual and telephone consultations.
• Guarantee private consultation rooms to protect confidential attorney-client conversations.
• Ensure that routine counts of people detained, shift changes or mismanagement do not prevent legal visits or result in detained individuals being late or missing scheduled hearings.

Ewurama Appiagyei-Dankah, ACLU of Michigan West Michigan Legal Fellow, said:

“No one should have to beg for hours to get urgent or even routine medical care, or fear that asking for help will result in retaliation. But this is the horrifying reality facing people who are detained by ICE at the North Lake Processing Center. One man has already died at North Lake, and several others have suffered serious health issues due to ICE’s failure to provide them with appropriate care. The failures to provide access to counsel are equally concerning. We call on ICE to immediately comply with the Constitution, and its own detention standards. Anything short of this will continue to put at risk the lives they are legally required to care for.”

“Many of our clients have experienced grave failures of ICE’s duty to provide adequate medical care, causing severe health consequences for our clients and worry by their loved ones,” said Ruby Robinson, Senior Managing Attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “Additionally, attorneys encounter arbitrary barriers, legal calls are restricted, and some clients are not receiving information about their hearings. It is critical that our local ICE field office exercise its authority to review and address these concerns and implement the necessary changes to protect health and legal access.”

“Mi hijo ha sufrido mucho en el centro de detención y me parte el corazón,” dijo Heydi, la madre de un joven detenido. “Les pido que le den la oportunidad de que yo lo cuide para que pueda recuperarse.”

“My son has suffered so much in detention and it breaks my heart,” said Heydi, the mother of a young man detained. “I ask that they give him the chance for me to take care of him so that he can recover.”

Press Conference recording can be found here
Letter can be found here