Inside ICE’s Broken System for Inspecting Detention Facilities

August 19, 2026

Inside ICE’s Broken System for Inspecting Detention Facilities

NEW INVESTIGATION

(Illustration: Luna Velez / POGO)

Inside ICE’s Broken System for Inspecting Detention Facilities

When the inspectors came to Prairieland Detention Facility, pancakes appeared on the breakfast menu, Leqaa Kordia recalled. The walls sported a fresh coat of paint. A new water cooler appeared in the intake room. In the days before the inspection in December 2025, Kordia — who had been held at the Texas ICE facility for nine months at that point — said she observed a dramatic transformation.

A sub-agency of ICE, the Office of Detention Oversight (ODO) is required to inspect detention facilities like Prairieland, making sure conditions are safe and align with detention standards. If a facility gets a failing inspection grade twice in a row, its contract with ICE is supposed to be defunded and terminated.

Kordia, a Palestinian woman who was detained by ICE in March 2025 for overstaying her student visa and incarcerated at Prairieland for a year, described the conditions there as humiliating and horrible. She recalled medical complaints going ignored, tap water with “things swimming in it,” and dorm rooms that smelled like “you’re sitting, sleeping, eating in a big bathroom.”

Kordia decided to tell the ODO inspectors about her concerns, she said.

Over the course of multiple conversations, she alerted them about the poor water quality, violations of her religious rights through a lack of Halal food or access to a Quran, and about her concerns over medical care at the facility, she recalled in an interview with POGO Investigates. She had her own health scare, when she’d endured a terrible fever that she said worsened because she was ignored and denied medical care. She says she ultimately ended up in the hospital after suffering a seizure and was chained to the hospital bed, “like an animal.”

POGO Investigates spoke with multiple attorneys whose clients had similar allegations of medical neglect, poor food quality, and lack of religious accommodations while detained at Prairieland. Conditions at the facility were also the subject of a March congressional oversight visit by Representative Marc Veasey (D-TX).

Scott Sutterfield, a former senior ICE official and spokesperson for LaSalle Corrections, the private prison company that runs Prairieland, emailed POGO Investigates a blanket denial of all allegations about the facility in this investigation. “We take any concerns about the welfare of individuals in our care very seriously,” he said, emphasizing that the facility is regularly inspected “by both internal and external bodies.” Sutterfield has not responded to a request for clarification and information about complaints filed by Kordia while detained at Prairieland, including whether they were investigated.

Kordia said the inspectors assured her that Prairieland’s issues would be fixed, and people would be held accountable. “But none of this happened,” she said.