Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A85]

Presenter: Jacqueline Angelina Jourdain

Faculty Sponsor: Razvan Sibii

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Public Health and Epidemiology

ABSTRACT

This paper will investigate healthcare and living conditions within U.S. immigration detention centers using news articles, NGO reports, and peer-reviewed research from 2025-2026 to illustrate their inadequacy relative to ethical and legal standards. Personal accounts of detainees also support that conditions are frequently insufficient and harmful to health. Health in detention centers heavily depends on living conditions, material resources, medical staffing, and adherence to detainee rights. However, detained individuals often lack sufficient nutrition, sanitation, and attention to medical conditions, contrary to national standards. After discussing these realities inside of detention centers, the ethical obligations of providing healthcare and adequate living conditions will be evaluated through the lens of detention being nonpunitive during the pendency of due process. Ethical analysis of this paper will converge medical ethics and legal obligation to evaluate necessary changes to the detention process. This paper will then explore historical comparisons to contextualize current conditions and conclude with suggestions to better fulfill ethical and legal obligations to detained individuals. The urgency of this issue is underscored by the fact that 60,000 people are held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on any given day (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 2026) and 30 people passed while in ICE custody in 2025 (Singh et al., 2026).