ICE Has Cut Its Detainees Off From Medical Care

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has stopped paying for immigrant detainees to receive health care—and isn’t planning on paying for months, independent journalist Judd Legum reported Tuesday.  

ICE Health Service Corps, the entity that provides immigrants in detention with health care, quietly posted last week that Acentra, the agency’s new third-party administrator for medical claims, would not begin processing claims until at least April 30. “Please continue to hold all claim submissions while IHSC works to bring the new system online in the interim,” the post read. 

ICE had previously paid the Veterans Association Financial Services Center to process claims for reimbursement—but abruptly ended that contract on October 3, 2025. According to government documents reviewed by Legum, ICE was left with “no mechanism to provide prescribed medication” and no way to “pay for medically necessary off-site care.” Immigrants in detention could no longer receive dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, or chemotherapy.

To be clear, ICE is not simply not paying for detainees’ medical treatment: Multiple reports suggest they are not providing it at all, even though federal law requires them to do so. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff released a report in October documenting at least “85 credible reports of medical neglect” at U.S. detention centers. 

Internal administration data obtained by Legum suggested that ICE has potentially accrued hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid medical claims. In 2024, the VA processed $246.42 million in medical claims, but despite a significant increase in the detainee population, the VA processed only $157.2 million in claims in 2025.   

“Assuming the medical needs of a typical ICE detainee remain constant, the data suggests nearly a $300 million gap between needed care from third-party providers and what ICE paid,” Legum wrote. “This gap is a combination of unpaid bills since October 3 and ICE detainees who are simply being denied necessary medical treatment.”

As ICE has upended health care access for immigrants in detention, national detentions have hit record levels, and the numbers of people dying in ICE custody have risen with them. 

Seven immigrants died in ICE custody in December, making it the deadliest month since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And 2025 was the deadliest year for immigrants in detention since 2004. 

So far, January is on track to be even worse: At least six people have already died in ICE custody this year, including one man who reportedly was choked to death by an ICE agent. 

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, President Trump was asked just how far he’d be willing to go to acquire Greenland. His response: “You’ll find out.”

His apparent threat only further reinforces what has been feared for weeks—that Trump will completely fracture U.S. diplomacy with the European Union, or worse, try to take over Greenland regardless of the risk or respect for sovereignty.

“If a consequence of your determination to take control of Greenland is the ultimate breakup of the NATO alliance, is that a price you’re willing to pay?” a reporter followed up later in the press conference.

“I think something’s gonna happen that’s gonna be very good for everybody. Nobody’s done more for NATO than I have.... Getting them to go up to 5 percent of GDP was something that nobody thought was possible,” Trump replied. “I think that we will work something out where NATO’s gonna be very happy and we’re gonna be very happy. But we need it for security purposes.”

That notion of happiness was quickly questioned, as well.

“Mr. President, you said you’re confident something’s gonna get worked out in Greenland, but Greenlanders have made it clear they don’t wanna be part of the U.S. What gives the U.S. the right to take away that self determination—”

“When I speak to them, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.”

While Democrats and even some Republicans are perplexed and alarmed by Trump’s imperialistic goals, others have thrown their full weight behind them. As Trump himself promised, it seems like only a matter of time before this situation escalates further.

Two employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may have been misusing Social Security data.

The Social Security Administration referred two DOGE employees to the Justice Department for being in contact with an advocacy group that hopes to “overturn election results in certain states,” Politico reports, citing court documents. One of them allegedly signed an agreement that could have involved using Social Security data to match with state voter rolls.

The SSA referred the two employees for violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their jobs for political purposes, according to DOJ official Elizabeth Shapiro. The court filings, disclosed Friday, were part of a list of “corrections” on testimony from SSA officials in the legal fight over DOGE gaining access to Social Security data.

The disclosures also show that DOGE team members shared information on unauthorized third-party servers and could have accessed data prohibited by court orders at the time. Shapiro said that two employees referred to the DOJ were the only known members involved with the political group, which wasn’t identified in court papers.

“At this time, there is no evidence that SSA employees outside of the involved members of the DOGE Team were aware of the communications with the advocacy group. Nor were they aware of the ‘Voter Data Agreement,’” Shapiro wrote, noting that it’s unclear whether the two DOGE employees actually shared data with the group.

However, Shapiro said emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.”

The news seems to confirm some of the fears surrounding DOGE’s access to sensitive government information: that the data could be used for illegal and nefarious purposes. DOGE’s access went far beyond the SSA to different government agencies including the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Treasury Department. Who knows if Musk and DOGE are also using that information illegally?

It’s been exactly one year since Donald Trump returned to the nation’s highest office. To mark the occasion, the president secured quality time in front of some of America’s top journalists Tuesday to, apparently, do little other than to talk to himself.

Trump joined the White House press briefing, sidling up alongside press secretary Karoline Leavitt with a large stack of papers that turned out to be more prop than speech. But it was the content of Trump’s remarks—or rather, lack thereof—that caused some onlookers to question whether the president was in a healthy state of mind.

“Hm, I’m just looking at these charges, it’s just pretty incredible,” Trump said, rifling through the stack of papers, intermittently pausing to hold a page up to the camera. “Many murderers. Many, many murderers. People that murdered.”

The president did not stop to name names, or to clarify which people he was targeting in his scrambled monologue, but the entries followed a general template that read at the top: “Minnesota: worst of worst.”

Trump continued to read names and lists of charges, sometimes without even looking at the camera. Instead, it appeared he was simply reading brand-new information aloud to himself.

Mass protests have kicked off in Minnesota since ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, on January 7. Since then, federal officers have ripped people from their homes and families, pulled over school buses, attacked teachers and students at a Minneapolis high school, and even clashed with local law enforcement.

In response, some protesters have opted to openly carry their firearms through the city, brandishing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Locals have formed neighborhood watches to follow ICE vehicles, banging pots and pans and screaming to alert others when agents enter their residential neighborhoods.

Local politicians—including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—have advised the federal agency to exit their cities and state, arguing that ICE and Border Patrol agents have done more harm than good. In 2025, before Good’s death, the agency killed 32 people—its deadliest year in more than two decades.

But rather than heed the warning, the Trump administration has opted to up the ante, issuing grand jury subpoenas to Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, while placing 1,500 active-duty troops on standby for a potential invasion of Minnesota.

“I’m going through this because I think we have plenty of time. I’m going to a place—beautiful place—in Switzerland, where I’m sure I’m very happily waited for,” Trump rambled. “In Switzerland they don’t know about this. They have other problems, but they don’t have this problem.”

“Look,” Trump said, holding up another page. “Killed someone.”

ICE’s racial profiling and unconstitutional acts in and around Minneapolis are even ensnaring local police.

Mark Bruley, the chief of police in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, said at a press conference Tuesday with other area police chiefs that local police departments have been “receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens,” adding that federal agents were demanding to see paperwork proving U.S. citizenship.

“As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off-duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them,” Bruley said, narrating an instance from one of his own officers who was boxed in by ICE officers while driving, who even knocked her phone from her hand as she tried to film her interaction with them.

“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers.… We know our officers know what the Constitution is, they know when right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted,” Bruley continued. “If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop.”

Bruley’s words show that ICE is not only engaging in racial profiling; they are desperate. It’s now known that the Trump administration feels that it can target just about anyone in its immigration enforcement efforts, contrary to laws and the Constitution. Federal agents began terrorizing the Minneapolis area more than a month ago to target the local Somali community at Donald Trump’s insistence, and those efforts have grown to target people of color more broadly, especially Latinos and Asians.

The revelation that all people of color are in ICE’s crosshairs in Minnesota highlights that the Trump administration shows no signs of stopping and is only escalating its efforts, despite becoming increasingly unpopular. What will it take for all of this to stop, and for Congress to finally intervene?