John Oliver on US immigration detention: ‘Should be a massive embarrassment’
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The Last Week Tonight host looks at Trump’s ‘largest deportation operation’ campaign and the dangerous state of facilities used to house immigrants

Guardian staff

Mon 10 Mar 2025 11.01 EDT

Last modified on Mon 10 Mar 2025 11.07 EDT

John Oliver took aim at the  detention system in the US and the many problems that come with it.

The Last Week Tonight host spoke about how  has centered deportation as a main element on his presidency and recently made “a big show of having Ice conducting immigration raids” which have largely been ineffectual.

His plan to launch the “largest deportation operation in American history” has led to him seeking “a new place to send migrants” from Costa Rica to Panama to Guantánamo Bay, a place that Oliver calls “a legal black hole where the constitution goes to die”.

He said that it was still “unlikely to house 30,000 migrants any time soon” and so instead, there will be a reliance on existing American facilities, which held 260,000 last year.

Oliver said that detention was “by law, not supposed to be a punishment” but he compared that definition to saying that the “ocean is not wet or the Wicked movie wasn’t 30 minutes too long”.

Despite Trump’s press secretary recently saying that all of these people are criminals, being undocumented is a civil violation not a criminal offence. Oliver joked that Trump should understand as “he has committed both”.

He added that almost half of those in custody were seeking asylum anyway and that “holding someone in detention is only supposed to be done in limited circumstances” as the vast majority do show up for hearings.

The US now has the “world’s largest immigration detention system” which “should be a massive embarrassment”, Oliver said.

While the average length of stay is just over 44 days, some people end up staying for longer than a year with “no set timetable for your release”.

Over 90% of facilities are owned by private prison companies which allows Ice to “outsource the headaches and responsibilities” that come with them.

He said it “works great for the companies and Ice but works much less well for anyone who needs to go through it”. Since many are in remote places, it cuts off detainees from legal representation and “conditions can be hard to see as access is so heavily controlled”.

Those housed at the facilities are required to do the cooking and cleaning themselves but can get paid as little as $1 a day and that the refusal to work can lead to the withholding of food or to solitary confinement.

Oliver said that the latter punishment was used 14,000 times over a five-year period with some people staying there for 27 days which passes the UN-set threshold of 15 days, which would then be classed as torture.

In 2024, 70 detained immigrants died in custody while 95% of all deaths in the facilities were found to be preventable if Ice had provided clinically appropriate care.

He played footage of a former Ice director asking “why are we in this business?” to which Oliver responded by saying: “The very fact this is a business is part of the answer.”

He said it is “a business like any other for-profit endeavour” and will get even worse under Trump who has already “expanded mandatory detention even further”.

Oliver said: “at the federal level honestly for the next few years we’re fucked,” although some states have already tried to “mitigate the harm” by barring private companies from being involved.

“Trump’s government is clearly going to do everything in its power to act as callously as possible in the next four years,” he said.

“We’re gonna have to find ways to push back hard at the state and local level at those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population.”
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