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Last November Popular Information broke the news that ICE had abruptly stopped paying outside providers for the medical treatment of detainees.
Popular Information does not just break news; it spurs real action.
Since we first published, Popular Information’s reporting on this issue has been cited in four Congressional letters (January 22, January 28, February 13, and July 1), an ACLU court brief, and a major report from Human Rights Watch. Popular Information has also been cited extensively by the national media, including the Los Angeles Times, The Texas Tribune, CBS News, Fast Company, and The New Republic.
We have not stopped our work. Today’s story is our fifth dispatch on this issue.
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Last year, Popular Information broke the news that on October 3, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abruptly stopping paying third parties for medical care provided to detainees. Third-party providers are used to provide “medically necessary” care including “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy,” according to ICE.
Prior to that date, payment for medical care for ICE detainees was processed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). But the VA “abruptly and instantly terminated” its agreement with ICE after the arrangement, which dated to the George W. Bush administration, drew criticism from right-wing activists. The activists falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were siphoning resources from veterans. Actually, ICE was fully reimbursing the VA for the service.
According to documents published by ICE on a government contracting website on November 12, 2025, the termination of the agreement with the VA left ICE unable to “pay for medically necessary off-site care.” ICE described this as an “absolute emergency” that needed to be resolved “immediately” to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life.”
Eleven months later, ICE still has no system to pay for outside medical care provided after October 3, 2025.
Hospitals and other providers who continue to treat ICE detainees are not receiving payment. UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, located in Aurora, Colorado, for example, has provided medical care for ICE detainees, including 150 hospital admissions, clinic appointments and emergency visits, since last fall. It hasn’t been paid for any of these services, racking up over $4 million in unpaid bills.
“Like other healthcare providers, UCHealth has been unable to submit claims and has not been reimbursed for care provided since October 1, 2025, because of a disruption in the Department of Homeland Security’s medical payment system,” UCHealth spokesman Dan Weaver told CPR News last month.
Moshannon Valley EMS is a non-profit organization which provides ambulance services in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. As of June, it had responded to 43 calls to a local ICE detention center since October 2025. It has not been paid for any of that work. “We have to have some faith that someone’s going to do the right thing and compensate us for the work that’s provided,” EMS chief Fred Ferguson told NOTUS.
Internal data obtained by Popular Information reveals that, in 2024, the VA processed over $246 million in medical claims related to the treatment of ICE detainees (and a much smaller number of detainees held by Customs and Border Patrol) by third parties. Data obtained by American Oversight found the VA processed $96 million in claims in 2025 before the relationship with ICE was terminated.
In the absence of payment, it is unclear how many providers, like UCHealth, are continuing to provide treatment and how many are refusing to treat ICE detainees.
An alarming increase in ICE detainee deaths
A report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights found that in “the 500 days between President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025 and June 4, 2026, 52 people died in ICE custody in the United States.” The mortality rate was “nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration.”
Although the information about these deaths disclosed by the Trump administration has been minimal, “Physicians for Human Rights medical experts had a high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care in several of the 39 deaths that occurred during the first year of the current administration, raising serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.”
The inability of ICE to pay for outside medical care, including emergency services, may be a contributing factor.
For example, on December 3, 2025, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a detainee at the Camp East Montana detention facility in Fort Bliss, Texas died of liver failure. According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, for two months before his death Gaspar-Andrés “went to the medical unit nine times, complaining of symptoms including bloody stool and bleeding gums.” But he “was sent back from visits to the medical unit with allergy, heartburn and indigestion medications and diagnosed with influenza despite repeatedly testing negative.” By the time he was finally transported to a hospital on November 16, doctors were unable to save his life.
On June 24, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General announced an “evaluation of detainee deaths in ICE custody“ because of “an increase of detainee deaths in ICE custody each year since fiscal year 2022.”