People detained at an overcrowded federal immigration camp in Mississippi were sickened by a mystery gas leak, then denied medical care when they complained of headaches and other symptoms, it has been alleged.
A lengthy power outage at Adams county detention center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility run by the private operator CoreCivic, also left it without air conditioning for two days this week, according to one detainee who contacted the Guardian through his family.
As a result, he said, people detained there were forced to spend hours outside in near 100F heat in blazing sunshine and with no shade, or left to swelter inside in cramped cells.
Tensions at the center, he said, were rising, and more arguments and physical altercations were taking place between people there, leaving him and others fearful of violence that he said inadequate staffing levels would not be able to handle.
The allegations come as a third person who was held in ICE custody at the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey, run by the GEO Group, another government contractor, was reported to have died; and an inspection report of the Adams county facility in Natchez found 23 violations of use-of-force or restraint standards.
Those deficiencies, found by inspectors from ICE’s office of detention oversight in May, led to the downgrade of the Adams county’s facility rating from superior in 2025 to acceptable/adequate this year.
The gas leak is said to have occurred last Saturday.
“They evacuated them out into the afternoon heat for hours,” said the wife of the detainee, whom the Guardian is not identifying by name for fear of retaliation.
“They were outside for hours. And when they came back in, it still smelled of gas. And then some of the men were getting headaches and symptoms of inhaled gas. They were never really told where the leak came from, how it was resolved, or was it fully resolved.
“Illness has been growing. So there are a lot of people getting sick, and they have begun putting people three to a cell that was designed for two.”
The power outage, the detained person reported, happened on Monday. Electricity was partially restored on Tuesday, he said, allowing lighting and other essential operations to function, but air conditioning remained out until late Wednesday.
“When these things are happening, either they’re shut out outside without shade and air conditioning, and they’re not given any answers,” the detainee’s wife, a US citizen, said. “Or a lot of the time the power was out they just had them locked in their cells, they didn’t get to leave for dinner or breakfast.
“There’s generators that run the defenses and things to make sure no one can escape, but they were without air conditioning for two days, and in Mississippi it’s very hot right now.”
The wife of the person detained said her husband told her authorities were clamping down on efforts by those incarcerated to “spread word” about the conditions.
“They didn’t give them the tablet devices during that time because they didn’t want them notifying loved ones,” she said. “If they feel anyone’s organizing anything they’ll send them to solitary.”
The Adams county facility is one of the nation’s largest immigration jails, and the only dedicated one in the state, although CoreCivic also conducts detention operations for ICE inside the private Tallahatchie county correctional facility in Tutwiler.
Mississippi Today reported in March that the 14-acre Natchez jail holds more than 2,000 detainees, but that only 9% of those detained had any kind of criminal record. The person who contacted the Guardian has an active asylum application for a green card. He has no criminal record, and was arrested by ICE in January at a routine appointment.
CoreCivic, which has headquarters in Tennessee, operates dozens of detention and correctional facilities around the country, many under contract to ICE. The company reported a 26% rise in revenue to $2.2bn in 2025, which Patrick Swindle, its president and chief executive officer, credited to “the trust of our government partners”.
At the same time, CoreCivic has come under increasing scrutiny for conditions and treatment of detainees inside its vast network. In April, Human Rights First published a damning report into alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” at the South Texas family residential center, an ICE detention camp for families in Dilley.
Last month, a court-appointed monitor found major flaws in care provided to detainees at the California City detention center near Los Angeles, including significant gaps in emergency care, failures to provide medications in a timely manner, inadequate screenings for health conditions and a lack of accommodations for people with disabilities.
A 2021 homeland security department inspection of the Adams county facility found “violations of ICE detention standards that threatened the health, safety, and rights of detainees”, including one episode in which a sick detained person was not sent to the hospital for urgent medical treatment and subsequently died.
Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic’s senior director of public affairs, said in a lengthy statement that the Guardian had “received some bad information” about the gas leak and power outage.
“While several detainees thought they may have smelled something related to a natural gas leak, none of our staff members detected anything along these lines,” he said. “Out of an abundance of caution, an on-call facility maintenance staff member came in to assess the facility for any possible gas leaks, and none were found.
“There was a storm on Monday that caused a power outage which impacted the facility and the surrounding community for approximately two hours. ACCC is equipped with emergency generators, and they operated as designed during the outage.
“When the power was restored, a transformer went out and had to be replaced by the local power company. This caused the lights in the common area of one housing pod to stay out. At no point were there any interruptions to the facility heating, ventilation or air conditioning (HVAC) systems.”
Gustin said at no time was anybody refused medical treatment. “We are committed to providing safe, humane and respectful care for everyone entrusted to us,” his statement said in part.
“Our clinic is staffed with licensed healthcare professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health counselors and dentists who contractually meet the highest standards of care, as verified by multiple audits and inspections.”
The Workers Circle, a New York-based Jewish social justice organization that assists families and loved ones of people who are detained, said it was alarmed by the allegations.
“No human being should be forced to endure the dangerous and inhumane conditions that have been reported here,” said Jessica Burroughs, the group’s national organizer for freedom vigils that it has conducted at ICE facilities nationwide for more than a year.
“We will continue to call attention to these reports until they are thoroughly investigated and addressed with the urgency they warrant. And we will demand accountability from those responsible to bring an end to these abuses once and for all.”
