PRAIRIELAND, Texas — Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities are increasingly receiving “Superior” inspection ratings even as reports document medical neglect, unsafe conditions and deaths in custody, according to an investigation by the Project On Government Oversight, or POGO.
The investigation begins at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas, where Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman detained by ICE last year, said she noticed a dramatic transformation in the days before inspectors arrived in December 2025.
According to her statement, “pancakes appeared on the breakfast menu, the walls received a fresh coat of paint and a new water cooler appeared in the intake room.”
Kordia described the facility’s conditions as “humiliating and horrible,” according to the investigation. She told POGO that medical complaints were ignored, the tap water contained “things swimming in it” and the dorm rooms smelled like “you’re sitting, sleeping, eating in a big bathroom.”
Kordia said she raised these concerns with ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight, or ODO, the agency responsible for inspecting detention facilities. She told POGO that she also reported concerns about poor water quality, violations of her religious rights and inadequate access to medical care.
A month after the inspection, ODO gave Prairieland the highest possible grade. According to POGO, inspectors interviewed 38 people at the facility, all of whom reportedly expressed satisfaction with the conditions, and the inspection found no violations of detention standards.
Kordia told POGO she was “very disappointed” by the result.
The investigation states that Prairieland’s rating is not an isolated case. POGO Investigates and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University analyzed 500 initial ODO inspection reports covering 174 facilities from fiscal years 2022 through 2026.
According to POGO’s analysis, the number of reported violations, known as “deficiencies,” dropped by nearly 70% between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. At the same time, the proportion of facilities receiving a “Superior” rating nearly tripled after fiscal year 2024.
As of July 23, approximately 74% of detention facility inspections in fiscal year 2026 had resulted in a “Superior” rating, according to the investigation.
POGO reports that this increase in positive ratings has occurred alongside weakened detention standards and a decline in the number of inspections being conducted.
The investigation also found that ICE has never given a failing grade to a dedicated ICE facility, which solely holds people in ICE custody. The few facilities that failed inspections were “non-dedicated facilities,” such as county and municipal jails that hold both people detained by ICE and people charged with crimes.
The increasingly positive inspection results have also occurred as deaths in ICE custody have risen.
According to POGO, 33 people died in ICE custody in 2025. As of Aug. 11, ICE had reported 23 deaths in custody in 2026. These are the highest numbers seen in more than two decades, according to the POGO article.
Adam Sawyer, an ICE data expert, told POGO that the trend did not make sense, arguing that “improved inspection ratings should generally correspond with fewer deaths rather than more.”
The investigation then pointed to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California as another example of the conflict between inspection results and reported conditions.
Four people have died at Adelanto since August 2025, according to POGO, including Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a 39-year-old Mexican immigrant and former DACA recipient. Ayala-Uribe died in September 2025 from complications of an abscess, a finding that supports the lack of proper health care in these facilities.
According to a coroner’s report obtained by POGO, Ayala-Uribe had complained of fever, shivers and rectal bleeding for three weeks while detained. The report stated that his family believed the facility had failed to provide him with medical attention.
According to the investigation, ODO inspected Adelanto just days before Ayala-Uribe’s death and gave the facility a “Good” rating with zero violations related to medical care.
An independent inspection by the California Department of Justice reached different conclusions. The DOJ found “inadequate medical and detention staffing, inconsistent medical, dental and mental health screenings and failures to provide necessary and timely medical treatment, including emergency care,” POGO reports.
Paula Sandoval, a supervising investigator with Disability Rights California, told POGO, “If this is what [the inspectors] claim is ‘Superior,’ and if they’re inspecting facilities nationwide, [she could not] imagine what those other facilities are like.”
According to POGO, only six facilities failed two consecutive inspections between fiscal years 2022 and 2026. Although a congressional provision indicates that facilities with repeated failures can lose federal funding and their contracts with ICE, five of those six facilities were still being used for ICE detention.
Scott Shuchart, a former senior adviser with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, told POGO that the system “has literally never worked,” stating that ICE has allowed facilities to receive waivers or have violations excused.
POGO also reports that ICE uses multiple sets of detention standards depending on when a facility entered into a contract with the agency. In fiscal year 2026, facilities could be inspected under six different sets of standards.
The investigation states that newer standards have removed certain protections. For example, the 2026 standards no longer require people participating in ICE facilities’ voluntary work programs to be paid. The newer standards also removed an annual requirement for independent state laboratories to test water at detention facilities.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official, told POGO that the standards have become “mushy,” which makes it more difficult for inspectors to identify poor conditions as violations.
Further, the investigation pointed to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, where Alma Bowman was detained for eight months in 2025. Bowman told POGO that people who were sick were “lucky if you get seen within a week,” despite the facility receiving no medical-care violations during its 2025 inspection.
A Stewart contractor disputed Bowman’s claims, according to POGO, claiming that detainees have “daily access to medical care and that Bowman’s medical concerns were addressed.”
POGO found that the average number of violations recorded during inspections dropped by nearly 70% between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. Camp East Montana in Texas, however, received an “Acceptable/Adequate” rating despite having 49 documented violations in its 2026 inspection report.
Meghan Squires, assistant director at the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, who worked on a 2025 report examining ICE’s inspection program, told POGO that the number of violations and their rating “doesn’t quite make sense.” GAO also found that ODO had not established measures to determine whether its inspection program was actually ensuring the “health, life, safety and welfare of people detained by ICE,” according to the investigation.
As ICE continues to detain record numbers of people, POGO’s investigation raises questions about whether the agency’s inspection system is adequately identifying and addressing unsafe conditions inside detention facilities.
The article concludes with a quote from Kordia: “We’re talking about people’s lives, dignity [and] freedom being taken away from them.”
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