Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Season 12 Episode 4
Aired on March 9, 2025
Main segment: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers
Other segments: 2025 Donald Trump speech to a joint session of Congress, town hall meetings with members of the 119th United States Congress, and the Trump tariffs
John Oliver discusses ICE detention facilities, who’s in them, who runs them and – of course – why it is totally understandable if our studio audience would rather watch Drew Barrymore’s show instead.
* * *
[John] Our main story tonight concerns immigration—the surprising subject of the White House’s actual Valentine’s Day tweet, which read:
“Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”
Though, I guess that’s exactly the kind of romance you’d expect from a house occupied by this loving couple.
Since Trump took office, he’s made a big show of having ICE conduct immigration raids, often with news cameras and even Dr. Phil tagging along to try and generate positive coverage—though it hasn’t always gone well. For instance, they raided apartment complexes in Colorado that were supposedly centers of gang activity, only to return with very few arrests and some humiliating footage.
As the team went door to door, they found blood-stained walls but no gang members. The entire complex was virtually empty. At a second Trende Raglink complex, ICE was met by activists who taunted them:
[Applause]
“What the f* is wrong with you? Get out of our community!”**
Excellent! We all need more of that woman’s energy. I don’t know what she has in that mug, but I do know what she doesn’t have—any f*s left to give.**
These raids are in fulfillment of Trump’s campaign promise to implement the largest deportation operation in American history. And to do that, it seems every week he devises a new place to send migrants—from Costa Rica, to Panama, to even this:
“The latest piece of the mass deportation puzzle: bringing as many as 30,000 criminal migrants to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.”
[Trump] “So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And tough—that’s a tough—that’s a tough place to get out of.”
[John] I mean… yeah, it is. Although calling GMO (Guantanamo Bay) a tough place to get out of is a bit of an understatement.
- A corn maze is a tough place to get out of.
- A low-hanging hammock is tough to get out of.
- GMO is a legal black hole where the Constitution goes to die.
Last month, Trump actually flew 178 Venezuelan migrants there—only to quickly reverse course and fly them out after the administration started facing lawsuits. And look, most experts agree that for both legal and logistical reasons, GMO is unlikely to house 30,000 migrants anytime soon.
And what that means is most of the people who get arrested are going to be funneled into our existing immigration detention facilities.
I know we’ve talked on this show a lot about our immigration system’s problems before:
- The fact that our immigration courts are arbitrary and incredibly slow
- The many holes in our asylum process
- The truth that for many, there is no way to “come in the right way”
- The failures of Joe Biden’s immigration policies
- And the cruelty of Trump’s policies
But tonight, we’re going to focus very narrowly on detention centers. They don’t tend to get talked about much, despite the fact that a lot of people go through them.
ICE currently has the budget to hold just over 41,000 people on any given day, and last year, more than 260,000 people cycled through ICE detention in total.
But Trump is already talking about sending even more people into that system, which in some quarters is cause for celebration.
After the election, stock prices for private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic soared—with their CEOs each bragging to investors about how much money they were going to make:
“The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company’s and country’s history, and the opportunities that it will bring.”
“I’ve worked at CoreCivic for 32 years, and this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career with the company.”
[John] Look, as a general rule, if something happens that causes a private prison company to get really excited, that thing was bad.
If you ever come home and your spouse tells you:
“Honey, I did something today, and the GEO Group is super excited about it.”
You are in for a relationship-altering conversation.
And the thing is, immigration detention facilities are by law not supposed to be a punishment. ICE’s own website even states that detention is non-punitive.
Though, as you’re about to see, that’s like claiming that:
- The ocean is not wet, or
- The Wicked movie wasn’t 30 minutes too long.
It is a bold assertion, sharply undercut by empirical evidence.
So, given all of that, tonight, let’s talk about ICE detention facilities and try to answer a few basic questions:
- Who’s in them?
- Who runs them?
- What’s it actually like inside them?
Who’s getting sent there?
Trump and those around him often try and sell their immigration roundups as being about cracking down on crime.
Here’s his press secretary answering a question about exactly who was arrested in the first round of ICE raids:
“The 3,500 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back into office.”
Reporter: “Can you just tell us the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally?”
Press Secretary: “All of them. Because they illegally broke our nation’s laws and, therefore, they are criminals as far as this administration goes. I know the last administration didn’t see it that way, so it’s a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal. But that’s exactly what they are.”
[John] Well, hold on, because that is not actually true.
While entering the U.S. without authorization can be a criminal offense, many of those who are undocumented entered legally and overstayed their visas. Simply being undocumented is a civil violation, not a criminal one.
That is an important distinction that her boss should frankly understand—given that he has committed both.
And to be clear:
- More than 50% of those in ICE detention have no criminal records.
- Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.
- A lot of them are already in the asylum process.
As of last year, almost half of those in ICE custody were seeking asylum. And that is actually true for some of those who got scooped up in Colorado last month.
One man got detained even though he had done everything he was supposed to do. He committed no crimes and had an asylum hearing court date. And yet, despite that, listen to his brother describe what happened:
[Testimony] On Wednesday, Luis’s brother, Yonathan, was driving him to work.
“No ID, though. ID—they didn’t even get past the parking lot at the Cedar Run apartment complex, where ICE detained at least five people as part of a raid Wednesday.”
Luis:
“They asked us for documents. We showed them the asylum process forms—the court-stamped forms for us.”
Luis says ICE officers wouldn’t accept his brother’s paperwork even though he showed his asylum documents as he waited on a work permit.
“He has so many questions about how his brother was detained without a criminal record.”
“If he doesn’t have a deportation order, how can they take him?”
[John] Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s actually one of many things I find hard to understand about watching that—including why those agents were wearing camouflage while doing it.
You’re in a parking lot, not dense foliage. If you actually wanted to blend in, you should have dressed up like a Claire’s accessories store in a strip mall.
The thing is, holding someone in detention is only meant to be done in limited circumstances, like if they’re a flight risk or to make sure they show up for an immigration hearing.
But the vast majority do show up for those hearings because they want their case heard.
For those with asylum claims—like that guy’s brother—a recent study found that of those who weren’t detained, 95% attended all of their Immigration Court hearings.
Now, there are some immigrants who are subject to what’s called mandatory detention, like if they’ve been accused of breaking the law.
That used to be confined to serious offenses like murder or gun trafficking, but that all changed when Bill Clinton expanded it to also cover minor crimes—from low-level drug convictions to writing a bad check.
And those convictions don’t even have to be recent.
Take this man, who was brought from Jamaica to the U.S. by his family when he was a teenager. He served in the military, but after completing his service, pled guilty to marijuana possession in 1997.
He moved on, started a business and a family—but then, in 2010, this suddenly happened:
[Testimony] “About 5:30 in the morning, I heard a big knock on the door—BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
And I opened the door, and then it was like—‘Did you apply for citizenship like six months ago?’
I’m like, ‘Yeah.’
And they were like—‘Turn around. That’s why we’re here.’
I didn’t think that in 2010, the marijuana conviction that happened 14 years ago would have come back to haunt me.”
[John] That is ridiculous.
No one should be punished for a minor mistake they made 14 years earlier—otherwise, I’d have hell to pay for playing Vanity Smurf in the 2011 Smurfs movie.
I was already punished when I saw it—and again when I had to pose for this press photo.
I think I’ve suffered enough.
The point is, that Clinton-era expansion supercharged the detained population, which passed 20,000 in 2001, only to expand through Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden to the point where we now have the world’s largest immigration detention system.
Which would be a massive embarrassment—because America has the world’s largest of a lot of things, and they’re mostly either awesome or at worst fantastically weird.
- We have the world’s largest paint can.
- We have the world’s largest office chair.
- And my personal favorite—the world’s largest basket.
It is seven stories tall—not including the handles.
And fun fact—it doubled as the headquarters for Longaberger, a basket manufacturing company in Ohio.
It was apparently the brainchild of the company’s founder, who wrote in his memoir:
“I figured if Walt Disney could build an empire around a mouse, the Longaberger home office building could resemble a basket.”
Adding:
“Whenever I talked about it, people looked at me like I was nuts.”
Sadly, the company vacated the basket in 2016, and it’s been abandoned ever since.
Though, you can find videos online of admirers who’ve made pilgrimages to see it since then—like this one:
[Video Clip]
“I don’t think the pictures are doing it justice. This looks way, way bigger in person than when I was seeing it in photos for a very long time.
And here I am… in the shadow of a seven-story basket.”
More companies need to do this—build their offices and headquarters in oversized buildings shaped like their products.
[John] I could not agree more with that. I’ve been saying the same thing for years.
There is nothing I want more than for:
- General Mills to be housed inside of a giant Cheerio
- L’Oreal to be housed inside of a giant lipstick
- McDonald’s to be housed inside of a giant ice cream machine that’s always out of service
All that said, I’d argue that being home to the empty, decaying carcass of the world’s largest basket office is still significantly less embarrassing than being home to the world’s largest immigration detention system.
See? I brought it back home in the end.
I bet you forgot what I was even talking about, but I knew where I was going with this.
I always know… sometimes.
The Reality of ICE Detention
And while the average length of stay for a person in ICE custody is just over 44 days, that is just an average.
- There are more than 2,800 people who’ve been detained from six months to a year.
- Nearly 700 people have been detained for longer than that.
And that is the thing—if you are sent into detention, you don’t know how long you’ll be there.
There is no set timetable for your release.
And even some of those in charge of these centers can almost acknowledge the problems with that:
[Testimony]“It’s not like a—a—a jail inmate that’s in here sentenced to a certain time. They know the day they get out. They have no idea when they’re—when they’re going to leave.
And I know—I mean, if—if I was in their place, it would be very difficult to not know when I’m leaving.
You know, people see it sometimes as—as a punishment. We don’t punish, so—so it’s—I know it’s viewed that way, but—but we aren’t going to hold somebody to—to punish them.”
[John] Okay, but the thing is, being locked up and not knowing when you get to leave is basically the definition of a punishment.
Just ask this studio audience right now.
Not only are they stuck here, they have no idea when this is going to be over.
They’re just trapped in this room, getting sleepier by the minute, wishing this was a taping of Drew.
Sorry, guys—she’s in the studio next door.
There’s a cooking demonstration today.
They’re giving out blenders.
Where Are These Facilities?
So that’s who’s in these facilities, but where exactly are they?
Well, sometimes ICE detains people in local jails, which is already a little weird given that, again, ICE detention is supposed to be non-punitive.
But the vast majority—over 90%, in fact—are held in facilities owned or operated by private prison companies.
That is why those CEOs were so excited on their earnings calls—because these companies make a ton of money out of detaining immigrants.
In fact, America’s very first private prison was built for immigration detention.
[Archival News Report]
“American business is becoming bullish on prison.”
“Firms like the Corrections Corporation of America in Nashville, Tennessee, believe there will be no business like jail business in the 1980s.”
“This construction site in Houston, Texas, will soon become the first completely free-enterprise prison in the United States—designed, built, owned, and operated by a business corporation.”
“It is being built for the U.S. Justice Department to detain up to 300 aliens charged with entering this country illegally and awaiting deportation hearings.”
“The market is enormous. There are over half a million people in this country incarcerated at the present time.”
[John] So… there is a lot there.
The sheer, unblinking creepiness of that man alone is a little distracting, as is the weirdly upbeat tone of the rest of the segment.
“No business like jail business” isn’t something you should be saying in a news report.
It sounds like a musical where Bernadette Peters shanks someone in their sleep.
And the fact is, business has been good for private prisons ever since:
- CoreCivic and GEO Group derive 27% and 30% of their revenues, respectively, from contracts for ICE detention alone.
And you can see why this is such an appealing model for ICE—they get to outsource the headaches and responsibilities of these facilities.
Sometimes, ICE even adds another layer of removal by contracting with local governments, who then in turn contract with private companies.
That is attractive because those particular arrangements are subjected to significantly less scrutiny than is required for ordinary federal contracts.
So this system seems to work great for the companies and for ICE… but it works much less well for anyone who needs to go through it.
What Are These Facilities Like?
Let’s start with the fact that they’re often located in incredibly remote areas.
That is actually a big deal because it means detainees can be cut off from legal representation.
- Some facilities have only one immigration attorney within a 100-mile radius for every 200 people detained.
- And because phone calls are often denied or difficult to schedule, lawyers like this one can spend a ridiculous amount of time just trying to get to their clients:
[Testimony]
“So, I leave my house in the mornings, um, get on the road, typically just try to power all the way through to the detention center.”
“We typically go only to Pine Prairie, and so that’s about a three, three-and-a-half-hour drive.”
“Um, today, we’re making the trip up to Jackson for some special cases, and so that’s a four-and-a-half, five-hour—depending on traffic—drive.”
[John] Yeah, that is a big problem, especially given that:
- Among detained immigrants, those with representation were twice as likely to obtain immigration relief as those without.
So lawyers are very important.
I know I make fun of them sometimes because lawyer used to be this guy’s job…
But without them, we would be:
- No Good Wife
- No Michael Clayton
- And definitely no this show
We’d have been shut down years ago, after being sued into oblivion for sexual harassment by Adam Driver.
And that is before you get to the conditions inside these facilities, which can be hard to see as ICE heavily controls access.
The glimpses you tend to get are either from:
- Heavily managed tours given to local news crews, or
- Videos produced by the facilities themselves
Like this one about a New Mexico facility, owned by a company called MTC:
[Promotional Video]
“The Otero facility hosts various sporting tournaments and other activities to keep the men engaged.”
“Just like the Imperial facility, detainees have access to medical and dental care.”
“MTC staff are trained to treat detainees with great respect and dignity.”
“We call it a ‘BIONIC’—Believe It Or Not, I Care—approach.”
[John] Okay… If your starting point to saying “I care” is “Believe it or not”, you’ve already got off on the wrong foot.
If I told you:
“Believe it or not, I don’t draw erotic fanfiction of the Honey Nut Cheerios bee.”
The very fact I said “Believe it or not” suggests you already assumed that I do.
It’s an assumption that is already damning on its own.
Because I don’t.
He’s not really my type.
Cartoon bumblebee-wise, this, for instance, does nothing for me:
(shows image)
Nor does this.
Not even this one.
And for what it’s worth, I definitely didn’t draw any of these myself.
Believe it or not.
The Reality of ICE Detention
And while they paint a lovely picture, the fact is:
Conditions in ICE detention can be brutal.
For instance, detainees are often expected to do a lot of the cooking and cleaning themselves.
And while ICE does require those jobs to be paid, the amount is pitifully small.
- In many places, it’s just $1 a day.
- And those who refuse to work can be threatened with the withholding of food or disciplinary segregation—also known as solitary confinement.
GEO Group was once sued over this at one of its facilities, and in court, they made a bold argument that the judge wanted no part of:
[Court Exchange]
GEO’s Lawyer: “Disciplinary segregation can be used as a sanction for the refusal to work. They make a decision each time whether they’re going to consent to work or not, or eat, uh, or be put in isolation, right?”
Judge: “I mean… yeah, it’s… I mean… slaves had a choice, right?”
[John] Oh. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. If the best defense for your business model is a hesitant comparison to slavery, you need a new business model.
Wow.
That is not great.
When a judge is likening your client’s practices to slavery, that’s generally a pretty bad sign for your case.
There really shouldn’t even be a verdict at that point—a trap door should just open up beneath you while they call the next case in.
And that’s not the only time detainees have been subjected to solitary confinement.
One study found that over a five-year period, ICE facilities placed people in solitary 14,000 times, with an average duration of 27 days—well exceeding the 15-day threshold that human rights experts say constitutes torture.
And that is not all.
ICE itself reported that between 2017 and last year, at least 70 detained migrants died while in its custody.
And the details in some of these cases are horrifying.
Take Kamyar Samimi—he immigrated from Iran in the ’70s and became a lawful permanent resident.
- In 2005, he pled guilty to possessing less than a gram of cocaine and was sentenced to community service.
- But 12 years later, ICE suddenly decided his drug conviction rendered him deportable.
That’s already bad enough.
But while he was held in detention, the staff cut him off from the methadone he took to manage his drug addiction—completely cold turkey.
- He started vomiting blood clots,
- But the staff delayed several more hours before calling 911,
- And Samimi died just two weeks after entering the facility.
And this is how his daughter found out:
[Testimony] “I got a text from my coworker letting me know that an immigration officer had stopped by my place of work and had left a business card and wanted to speak with me.”
“And he answered the phone and told me that my father had suffered cardiac arrest, that he was taken to a hospital, and then he was pronounced dead.”
“My dad died on Saturday… and I got the call on Monday.”
“I think it’s very strange that ICE observes business hours to tell people that their loved ones are dead.”
[John] Yes.
“Strange” is definitely one way to describe it.
A fucking disgrace would be another.
And incredibly, that story is not even a one-off.
One study found that 95% of deaths in ICE custody were preventable or possibly preventable if ICE had provided clinically appropriate medical care.
One of the cases it cites is a man from Angola who:
- Began showing symptoms of mental illness,
- Refused to eat meals, losing 30 pounds in 30 days,
- At one point, agreed to drink Ensure, but the staff never provided any because the ICE coordinator responsible was trying to find it at a “reasonable or discounted price.”
That facility, by the way?
The same one featured in that upbeat video about how, “Believe It or Not, We Care.”
So I guess they mean that phrase in the exact same way Ripley’s Believe It or Not means it.
“Look, we’re completely full of sh*t. How you feel about it is really up to you.”
Why Are We Even Doing This?
And if, after all of this, you are thinking:
“Well, it sure seems like we’re doing an incredible amount of damage unnecessarily.”
You are absolutely right.
And don’t just take that from me—here is a former director of ICE basically saying the same thing:
[Former ICE Director]
“We detain lots of people who are not dangerous and aren’t a flight risk.”
“And it—it makes no sense to me.”
“We should ask ourselves a larger question, which is: Why are we in this business?”
“What do we get out of this?”
“And it’s just the politics of it, right? The public likes to hear ‘detention’—it sounds tough.”
[John] I mean, that is true.
The public does love things that sound tough.
It’s probably why Mark Sinclair made his stage name Vin Diesel and not Regal Chucklewams III.
But when he asked:
“Why are we in this business?”
The very fact that this is a business is part of the answer.
And that is a fact not lost on some of those inside these facilities:
[Testimony] “By keeping us here for seven or eight months, they are making money on us.”
“Because we are a business for them.”
“Immigration in this country is a business.”
[John] He’s right.
Immigration is a business.
Like any other for-profit endeavor in America, whether it’s:
- Toxic Rage Circle Jerk, Inc.
- The Small Business Elimination Omni-Company
- Or Pottery Barn
…I—I actually don’t have anything bad to say about Pottery Barn.
They make high-quality home goods at affordable prices.
Keep doing what you’re doing, Pottery Barn.
What Comes Next?
But the thing is—everything I’ve shown you so far has been from before Trump took office for a second time.
What comes next will almost certainly be worse:
- Congress recently expanded mandatory detention even further to cover undocumented people charged with any theft-related offense.
- Trump has started placing migrants in federal prisons.
- He’s reopening facilities that were forced to shutter amid allegations of unsafe or overcrowded conditions.
So… What Do We Do?
Well, at the federal level, honestly… for the next few years, we’re f*ed**.
But some states have found ways to mitigate the harm:
- Illinois barred private companies from contracting with local communities to detain immigrants.
- It also prohibited cities and counties from contracting with ICE to house or detain immigrants at local jails.
Which is great.
I would argue all states should be doing that.
And to its credit, New Mexico is considering a similar proposal right now.
The Bigger Picture
Look, Trump’s government is clearly going to do everything in its power to act as callously as possible for the next four years.
And I know no one wants to hear another heartfelt soliloquy about how this administration’s immigration policies fly in the face of America’s founding ideals.
We are well past that.
But moving forward, we’re going to have to find ways to push back—hard—at the state and local level against those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population.
And to anyone who continues to support that agenda, there is really only one thing to say:
[Applause]
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
[John] Yeah. Exactly.
