Well, in the budget request to Congress, the Trump administration asked for a massive funding increase to expand immigration enforcement.

A big portion of that is to add capacity at ICE detention centers by about 100,000 beds.

But throughout its history, ICE facilities have been plagued by documented problems, including poor conditions and even human rights abuses.

NJ Spotlight News looked through years of inspection reports conducted at the centers in New Jersey and around the country and found both disturbing and alarming practices that appear to be widespread.

Our Washington, D.C. correspondent, Ben Hulak, joins me now with more details.

Ben, thanks for joining me.

All right.

In light of all the renewed energy, attention, money that's looking to be thrown to ICE, you looked at some of the problems that have incurred there in the past.

Can you give us a sense of what you found?

Yeah, I spent a little bit of time this week looking at old IG reports, inspector general reports that the parent agency of ICE, Homeland Security, has conducted over the years over Democratic, Republican administrations.

And it really runs the gamut from pretty revolting information about how food is stored, bloody chicken was discovered at an ICE holding facility in Essex County back in 2018, moldy bread, really revolting food.

And then also medical procedures like hysterectomies were performed on women who did not need them, and there was no medical reason for that.

And then both in the Biden and Trump administrations, ICE has a record of losing tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors.

These are the children of undocumented immigrants in the US.

So that's really a lot of the backdrop.

And then more recently, folks detained in ICE facilities have had a hard time or really an impossible time getting a hold of outside legal counsel or their family members because they haven't been allowed PIN numbers to use phones inside a lot of these facilities.

So it's a deep and checkered troubling past that ICE has across the years.

Are the findings of these inspector general reports widely known, at least among members of Congress, because there's support for expanding not just the operations, but the funding there?

Are members at all concerned about some of the troubled past?

It really splits down the party line.

This is a tough crackdown on immigration is really the hallmark of this Trump presidency.

In a way, it even wasn't in the first Trump presidency.

Much of that term was about building the border wall with Mexico.

ICE has taken front and center stage in this term.

So Democrats absolutely are appalled, horrified, and worried about these findings.

There also is a new wave of Democrats, including Lamonica McIver from New Jersey, who represents Newark, who were not here in the first Trump administration.

So a lot of members, newer members, are finding out, sort of as the public is finding out, how these ICE centers work.

But it's clearly down the party lines.

And does it look at this point as though what the administration has requested in terms of funding, in terms of personnel, that that will happen?

I don't know, but it's a really valid question.

There's a standard appropriations process, and ICE gets money through that, of course.

On top of that, ICE has requested $45 billion for this massive buildout of ICE facilities.

So Delaney Hall is about 1,000 beds.

That's the capacity.

The administration wants 100,000 beds.

So we're talking 100 Delaney Hall-sized ICE facilities.

Whether Congress says, yes, we'll foot the bill for that, that's up in the air.

But this is a huge sticking point on the Hill, and Democrats are not pleased.

But of course, they're in the minority, so the leverage they have is minimal.

All right.

The rest of the Capitol there shut down for Juneteenth, but Ben Hulak for us on the Hill.

You can read Ben's story on this and all of his reporting on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Ben, thanks.

Thank you.

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