DHS denies reports of torture, beatings and medical neglect in ICE detention

The Homeland Security Department (DHS) on Sunday denied a report in The New York Times about harsh treatment of migrants in immigration detention facilities.

“Another day and another hoax about ICE detention from the @nytimes,” DHS wrote on social platform X . “The media is clearly desperate for these false allegations to be true.”

The Times reported Sunday on 10 deportees who said they experienced or witnessed what they described as abusive or violent treatment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

The Trump administration later deported the migrants to third countries such as Liberia, despite them not having any ties to the African country. The administration has reportedly struck deportation deals with at least 35 countries.

Leonardo Sánchez, a Cuban migrant, told the Times that ICE officers forced him and three other deportees onto the tarmac in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, after they refused to disembark.

The federal agents then twisted the migrants’ handcuffs, pinned them to the ground and pressed their knees directly onto the their necks, Sánchez recalled.

“They didn’t treat us like people, like human beings,” Carlos Téllez-Sanchez, a Venezuelan whom the administration deported to Liberia, told the paper. “They can say or do anything to you and there’s nothing you can do.”

Other deportees said ICE officials denied medical care to migrants, including pregnant women, and housed detainees in detention centers where up to 50 people shared one toilet.

But the DHS denied those claims, saying, “NO ONE is being tortured, denied medical care, or beaten in ICE detention facilities.”

The department also argued the report in the Times, which it called “GARBAGE,” is one of many “fueling” an increase in “assaults” against ICE officers.

DHS officials said in January that death threats against its law enforcement officers were up 8,000 percent, with assaults up by more than 1,300 percent.