ICE detention center in Michigan faces new allegations of poor medical care

DETROIT — A privately run immigration detention center in northern Michigan has failed to provide necessary medical care to detained immigrants and limited their access to lawyers and court proceedings, two civil rights groups alleged in a letter sent Wednesday to Kevin Raycraft, the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Detroit field office.

In the letter, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union urged ICE to consider releasing detainees with severe medical concerns, order an independent audit of medical care at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin and guarantee attorney access to detainees.

North Lake is one of the largest ICE detention centers in the Midwest, with a detainee population of more than 1,400, according to the latest figures released by the agency. The News reported last month that medical care at the facility was strained by overcrowding, a concern that contributed to a hunger strike in late April.

"I have serious concerns about the safety of individuals who are detained in the North Lake facility," said Dr. Marc Stern, a Washington-based correctional physician with experience reviewing conditions in ICE detention centers, at a press conference on Thursday.

Stern said, "medical records indicate clearly that there are problems that endanger the lives of those detained [at North Lake]." He reviewed the cases of two detainees, both of whom had conditions that required follow-up care—one had a mass in her breast tissue that required a mammogram, and the other needed physical therapy to recover from a seizure.

Both went for more than four months without the care they should have received, Stern said.

The medical records also indicated that licensed practical nurses, who receive far less training than physicians, physician assistants or registered nurses, appeared to diagnosed and treated detainees independently.

"They are seeing patients as if they were primary care practitioners and sending the patients out with care," Stern said.

Allowing nurses with limited training to treat patients in a detention center, Stern said, "can lead to a very bad outcome, including death."

One detainee has died at North Lake since the facility reopened as an ICE detention center in June 2025: 56-year-old Nenko Gantchev, a Bulgarian immigrant who had lived in Chicago for 30 years.

The News reached out to ICE's Midwest media office and GEO Group, the private company that runs the North Lake detention facility, for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.

Mother pleads on behalf of son detained at North Lake

At the press conference, a woman from Honduras who was identified only as Heidy introduced herself as "a mother who has been suffering for nine months without being able to see her son."

While in ICE detention, her son's mental health has deteriorated to the point that he no longer speaks, the woman said. He has been detained since October 2025, according to MIRC attorney Ruby Robinson.

“Since November 30, I haven’t been able to speak to my son," the woman said in Spanish.

"As a mother not knowing where he is ... it's been an indescribable torture. I’ve sent more than 15 emails in English, begging for information. I begged for information about his mental health. I told them that he was doing very poorly, he needed medical attention, that his condition wasn’t normal," she said.

After several months in North Lake, Heidy said her son was transferred to facilities in Florida, Texas and Louisiana before he returned to North Lake.

Heidy said she was speaking publicly to represent other families in similar situations.

"No mother should go months without hearing from her child. No mother should have to beg for basic information about the state of the health of her detained son," she said. "I’m never going to stop fighting for him and I don’t want his suffering to be in silence.”

Her son was recently transferred to another facility to receive additional medical care, according to Christine Sauve, manager of policy and communication for MIRC.

"We're glad that he is going to get the care he needs, but it affirms for us that North Lake was not equipped to handle his condition," she said.

Barriers to legal access alleged by immigrant rights groups

The letter to the Detroit ICE field office director claimed that North Lake's policies "unreasonably" obstruct attorney visits and calls, which MIRC and the ACLU claim violates detainees' rights and ICE detention standards.

“These restrictions are not merely administrative inconveniences; they implicate core constitutional protections,” they wrote in the letter.

Barriers to legal assistance allegedly included narrow call windows for attorneys and detainees, repeated security check-ins between multiple clients on the same day and what the organizations described as an "arbitrary" dress code that has resulted in attorneys being turned away from the facility.

Attorneys also complained that they were forced to meet clients in spaces where detention officers could hear their conversations, like open family visitation rooms, preventing them from having confidential legal conversations.

Facility mismanagement also caused some detainees to arrive late to or miss immigration hearings and legal calls, MIRC and ACLU claimed in the letter. In one instance, a client was issued a deportation order after North Lake staff failed to facilitate the client's appearance at a court hearing, according to the advocacy groups.

In the letter, MIRC and the ACLU requested a response from ICE leadership by May 29.