MS NOW: HIAS Client Speaks Out About Horrifying Conditions in ICE Detention

More than 73,000 people are currently detained in ICE facilities across the U.S., a record high. The Trump administration has arrested and detained immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees alike, holding them in deplorable conditions. More than 70% do not have any criminal conviction.

This week, HIAS program participant Juliette* appeared on MS NOW to bravely share her experience being wrongly detained by ICE.

Juliette is an asylum seeker who fled persecution in Cameroon in 2023. She immediately began the process of applying for asylum and started to rebuild her life in the United States, supported by HIAS’ U.S. legal and social services teams. Then, two months ago, she was arrested by ICE. She was handcuffed, shackled, and transferred through multiple detention centers, where she experienced horrifying conditions.

“It was very crowded,” Juliette said. “We had to sleep on the floor, on the concrete. There were no mattresses, there was no bed. There was just one pot for the toilet and the smells were awful. There was no sanitation. I spent six days without washing and wearing the same clothes. We ate with our hands handcuffed.”

Eventually, she landed at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a Texas facility that has held thousands of immigrants in notoriously harsh conditions. Some of the women she met there had been detained for months, and for Juliette, the uncertainty of how long she would be detained was its own kind of cruelty.

Were it not for the swift action taken by HIAS’ legal and social services team, Juliette would still be in detention, away from her children, her job, and her life.  Our teams are now supporting her as she navigates the trauma of yet again living in a country where she experiences fear and uncertainty.

Even though Juliette was freed, coming home was its own kind of heartbreak.

“Since I came back, life has not been the same because I was traumatized by what I experienced,” she said. “I lost everything I had and was doing before being detained.”

The stability she had worked so hard to build has quietly come undone. She now wears an ankle monitor — a visible marker that follows her everywhere she goes, that makes strangers move away from her on the street, that makes her feel, in her own words, like a criminal, when all she ever did was seek safety.

“I have to start from scratch,” Juliette shared. “I don’t feel safe. I have experienced fear, fear in my belly, my stomach, and also on a physical level, I am not the same.”

Juliette shared her story with MS NOW, anonymously, because she wanted the world to understand what is happening right now to people who come to the U.S. looking for protection and find the opposite.

Juliette’s story is not an exception. It’s exactly why HIAS’ legal team shows up, in detention centers and courtrooms, for people whose names most of the world will never learn.

It’s exactly why our social services team was there for Juliette, because we know that the people we fight for in courtrooms are the same people who need someone steady beside them when the hard work of recovery begins.

And it’s exactly why HIAS is currently contributing to seven legal challenges to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. Among them: Amica Center for Immigrant Rights v. EOIR, challenging harmful changes that would gut the ability of immigrants to appeal the decisions made in immigration court; and U.H.A. v Bondi, making the case that detaining resettled refugees for rescreening is cruel, harmful, and retraumatizing.

Juliette chose to speak so that her story might change something, might shift the conversation. We are grateful beyond words for her courage. No matter what, HIAS will stand with Juliette and all displaced people seeking safety in the U.S.

*Name changed for safety.