Janine Jackson interviewed Detention Watch Network's Setareh Ghandehari about ICE violence for the January 16, 2026, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Growing numbers of people in this country are saying they've seen enough of ICE. One new poll has 46% of respondents calling for the agency's end, while a different poll has 51% saying ICE makes cities less safe, not more.
And that animus didn't just start with the daylight murder of Renee Good. Despite flagrant lies and hatemongering from the White House, more people every day are coming to acknowledge—from raids on hospitals, schools and job sites, the separation of families, horrific detention, armed masked men not just kidnapping people off the street, but assaulting witnesses to these kidnappings—that ICE is not "flawed," because it's not fixable.
Our guest's organization noted recently that, while eyes are understandably fixed on the nightmare in Minneapolis, ICE has revealed that four people died in its custody in just the first 10 days of 2026. Decades of evidence illustrate that no one is safe in ICE custody, says Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Setareh Ghandehari.
JJ: It does seem critical to see how ICE is not a valid project done poorly, carried out by people who are insufficiently "trained," or who might accidentally be racist. You describe it as an "inherently violent agency." What makes that conclusion so clear?
SG: That's right. I mean, it's not like all of a sudden we woke up, in January 2025, and ICE had magically transformed into what we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis this month. What we're seeing play out right now is the result of decades of ICE funding going up exponentially, decades of ICE being able to act with impunity. We have seen, for decades, that ICE is inherently violent, that people die in its custody, that the system of detention separates families, creates chaos in neighborhoods across the country.
And so what's happening in Minneapolis is really an amplification of that. But it's something that we should expect after the decades of growth and lack of, really, any sufficient changes. Advocates have worked for decades to try to improve this agency, and it just continues to get worse and worse. There's no way to reform ICE. And the infrastructure that they have been able to build up over the last many decades is what is allowing them to do what they're doing today, on the streets of Minneapolis and across the country.
JJ: I fear that there is still some sense that if you are a US citizen with no criminal record, you might get swept up, but you will get out; somehow the system will ultimately work for you. And that makes a sustained spotlight on detention centers so critical. If they're just spaces where, well, you're not convicted, you're not declared guilty, you're just being detained till we figure it out, so what's the worry?
Setareh Ghandehari: "If ICE is acting with such impunity and disregard for human life in broad daylight...what happens inside of immigration detention centers?"
SG: That's not the way a functioning system operates. We cannot accept this sort of violence being inflicted on immigrants or US citizens. What we know about ICE detention, coming on the heels of the tragic murder of Renee Good, and after last year being the deadliest year in ICE custody in two decades, we're barely, as you mentioned in the opening, two weeks into the new year, and there have already been four deaths in ICE custody. So you can imagine, if ICE is acting with such impunity and disregard for human life in broad daylight, on the streets of Minneapolis and across the US, what happens inside of immigration detention centers?
We hear so much about the violence that's happening during the enforcement activities, right, like the violence we're seeing on the streets, the shootings, the violent separation of families, snatching people off the street, chasing people into traffic; we've heard of several instances of that over the last year as well. And then we hear about the devastation when people are deported and separated permanently from their families.
But I think we're missing the link there. As I was talking about infrastructure before, of what happens after arrest and then before deportation, and that is detention. And it's such a critical and central part of this whole mass deportation agenda. It's really a mass detention and deportation agenda. And so that's why it's so important, and we're keeping such a close eye on the massive expansion of the system, and they clearly have plans to expand it even further.
There have been 136 new facilities added to the system, and they're full speed ahead trying to add more. We've heard stories that they're looking to expand into warehouses—to detaining people in warehouses, which is unconscionable—in addition to jails, prisons, military bases across the country. So I really want to underscore how critical detention is to their plans, and why it's so important that we go after detention funding specifically, to reduce that infrastructure so they can't actually carry out those mass deportations.
No one should be subject to that sort of abuse, and those inhumane conditions that we have seen for decades inside of ICE detention. And those conditions have been rapidly deteriorating over the last year, and the system has been growing. So Trump added 136 new detention facilities to the ICE detention system last year.
And we have decades of evidence that shows that the conditions in these facilities are unacceptable. People are subject to medical neglect. There's moldy food. We know, frequently, there are plumbing issues that cause flooding, and all sorts of really egregious conditions that people are forced to live through. So this is nowhere for anyone to be “detained.”
JJ: Absence of medical care, you know, you take away the medicines, and then you don't allow people access to lifesaving medicines. That's not what you do when someone is not declared a danger, but you're just holding them to “find out.” That just seems like “cruelty is the point" kind of stuff.
SG: Yeah. No one should be in these facilities. No one should suffer these conditions. And cruelty is certainly the point. That's definitely part of the policy, is to create conditions that are so bad that people "self-deport." That has been clearly a part of this administration's policy. They haven't minced words about that. But that's also been the policy of the United States for decades. Detention is part of a deterrence policy, and that's partially why conditions are so abhorrent.
JJ: Right. And it's been wild to see elected officials denied entry from places where people are being held. You always think there's not a new corner to turn, but that does seem like a special thing, to see elected officials not able to see their constituents when they are being detained.
SG: That's right. Elected officials, members of Congress, have the right and responsibility under appropriations law to conduct unannounced inspections of ICE detention centers. And ICE is seeking to obstruct that, and deny members of Congress entry. And that is unheard of and unacceptable. They have the legal right to visit, and when we see that they're being denied, you have to wonder what is happening in those facilities. I mean, you don't have to wonder, because we know, we have documented it.
JJ: That's kind of the point, is that of course you want to call for transparency and accountability, and at the same time, they're being so upfront about what they're trying to do.
And so it calls for resistance, and we see resistance. We see people in the street, we see people documenting ICE actions, people alerting their neighbors, people denying ICE entry to places, and helping their frightened neighbors get their kids to school. We're seeing this community-level resistance. I wonder, what are the other points of intervention? What are the other points of resistance, including legislative? What do you see?
SG: Yeah, first, I can say that at Detention Watch Network, we have over 100 member organizations, and many more who are part of our Communities Not Cages campaign, where we bring together coalitions of local organizations across the country who are fighting to keep ICE detention centers out of their communities.
Because we know that when detention centers exist in communities, the risk to friends, family, neighbors of being arrested and detained is much higher. They're much more likely to be arrested and detained, and suffer the abusive conditions of ICE detention, when there is an ICE detention center nearby.
So to stop ICE violence and cruelty, we have to also start at that infrastructure level. And that's why it's crucial that we cut funding for ICE detention right now. And that's one of the most important points of interventions that exist at this moment, as Congress is negotiating the next fiscal year's budget.
This is happening right now, as we speak. They're talking about how much money they're going to give ICE, are there going to be measures to rein ICE violence in? And I think it's critical that Congress stop giving ICE more money, and that Congress actually cut funding, so that we can start reducing that detention and enforcement infrastructure. So that's, I would say, the No. 1 thing that anyone can do right now, is to call members of Congress and demand that ICE funding be cut in this upcoming bill.
JJ: Finally, I know, and I appreciate your underscoring that nothing is really being invented here. You know this isn't brand new out of the box. It's working on roots that existed.
But an immigration policy where you just straight up say, “We don't want people from that country because they're Black and brown. We want people from white countries because they're white.” Just from a media, from a public conversation perspective, when do we get to say it's not about immigration per se, when it's so obviously about a deep-seated racism? And I just wonder, how you would like the conversation to shift?
SG: Yeah, I think it's so important for people to understand that race has always been an integral part of immigration policy in this country. You can go back to the first immigration laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act; even the rise of the immigration detention system really can't be separated from anti-Black racism, as it was part of a response to Haitian migrants trying to come to the US in the '80s and '90s. So it's actually a critical part of the equation.
And we know that ICE targets people because of the way they look, the language they speak, the types of jobs they have. And we also know that the response to immigrants from, say, Ukraine in the last couple of years have been very different from the response to migrants from Central, South America or African countries.
So race is absolutely a big part of this. And I think white supremacy has always been a central tenet of our immigration laws, and part of this country's history. And I think we're really seeing that play out right now, too, in immigration policy.
JJ: All right, well, there's going to be much more to talk about, but we'll pause it there for now. We've been speaking with Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. Thank you so much, Setareh, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
