Mississippi ICE detainee alleges gas leak sickened detainees, denied care

CoreCivic disputes detainee’s account; facility downgraded this year

A detainee at the Adams County detention center in Natchez, Mississippi — an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility operated by private contractor CoreCivic — alleges that a gas leak sickened people held there and that staff denied them medical care when they complained of symptoms. The same detainee, who spoke to The Guardian through his family, said a separate power outage left the facility without air conditioning for two days, with people forced outside in blazing sunshine and no shade or locked inside their cells.

The Guardian is not identifying the family by name, citing fear of retaliation. “They evacuated them out into the afternoon heat for hours,” the wife of the detainee told the newspaper. “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.”

The gas leak is said to have occurred last Saturday. The detainee’s wife said illness was spreading among those held there and that detainees were being placed three to a cell designed for two. Mississippi Today reported in March that the 14-acre Natchez facility holds more than 2,000 detainees, of whom only 9% had any kind of criminal record. The detainee who contacted The Guardian has an active asylum application for a green card, no criminal record, and was arrested by ICE in January at a routine appointment, his wife said.

The power outage occurred on Monday, the detainee reported. Electricity was partially restored on Tuesday, 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 wife 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.”

The detainee’s wife said authorities were withholding tablet devices during the period to prevent detainees from notifying loved ones, and that anyone perceived as organizing could be sent to solitary. “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,” she said.

Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic’s senior director of public affairs, said in a 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.”

On the power outage, Gustin said a Monday storm caused an outage that impacted the facility and the surrounding community for approximately two hours, after which a transformer failure required replacement by the local power company. He said the facility’s emergency generators operated as designed during the outage and that “at no point were there any interruptions to the facility heating, ventilation or air conditioning (HVAC) systems.” Gustin said at no time was anyone refused medical treatment.

The allegations come as inspectors from ICE’s office of detention oversight found 23 violations of use-of-force or restraint standards at the facility in May, downgrading its rating from “superior” in 2025 to “acceptable/adequate” this year. Separately, a third person held in ICE custody at the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey, run by the GEO Group, has been reported to have died. A 2021 Department of Homeland Security inspection of the Adams County facility found “violations of ICE detention standards that threatened the health, safety, and rights of detainees,” including an episode in which a sick detained person was not sent to a hospital for urgent medical treatment and subsequently died.

CoreCivic, which has headquarters in Tennessee, reported a 26% rise in revenue to $2.2 billion in 2025, which President and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Swindle credited to “the trust of our government partners.” In April, Human Rights First published a report on alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, an ICE detention camp also operated by CoreCivic. Last month, a court-appointed monitor found major flaws in care provided to detainees at the California City detention center near Los Angeles, including 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.

The Workers Circle, a New York-based Jewish social justice organization that assists families and loved ones of people 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 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.”