Detained men mail nearly 200 pages of testimony and art out of Texas ICE jail

DHS denies mistreatment claims while CoreCivic defends its role

A group of men held at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail on the outskirts of Austin have mailed out a rare account of life inside: nearly 200 pages of handwritten testimony in Spanish, drawings and documents, compiled from inside the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas. The writings, done between July and September, were mailed to a detainee’s relative and shared with the advocacy group Center for Popular Democracy, which passed them to The Guardian. The Guardian received testimonies from at least five detainees after months of detention and is withholding most identifying details for their safety.

One of the men put his account to music. Julian Osorio Garcia, a Colombian asylum seeker who chose to be named, wrote two protest songs and sang them over the facility’s pay phone. “We are the people, raising our voice. You are my brother, brother I am. Today as you find yourself in this prison, give me a hug, I give you love,” he sang in one. In the other: “They persecute us, they arrest us, they put chains on us … Let’s all take to the streets, let’s go out en masse, we are Hispanos Free.”

What happens inside ICE detention centers happens behind closed doors and high fences, and personal accounts of lengthy detention, sickness and alleged abuse rarely reach the public directly while people remain behind bars. The writings arrive as many tens of thousands of people are detained by ICE across the country — the majority without criminal histories, according to the Guardian. The men’s reported experience is common, the Guardian noted; their way of communicating it is not.

The T. Don Hutto facility, which detainees call “la perrera” — Spanish for “the dog pound” — is relatively small and holds only men. It is run for ICE by the private prison company CoreCivic. A daily roster page showed 497 detainees in late September, almost reaching full capacity; most were booked into the facility in 2026, many others in 2025, and two men have been held since September 2023, more than three years, according to the roster.

In the testimonies, the men say the facility makes them feel not like people but like “inventory”. “We are immigrants, we are not criminals,” one wrote. The men blame their situation on “nothing more than the result of racist policies” by the Trump administration. One asked: “Why is it that a simple migrant, who one day leaves for work, can end up not seeing sunlight nor breathing pure air for days, simply due to a status adjustment?” — referring to the detention of immigrants despite temporary legal status or ongoing cases. Another describes the men “behind bars, living an experience that marks a ‘before’ and ‘after’ for the detainee and his family”. One writer said the compilation aimed to “alert, denounce and affirm what is seen, lived and felt daily, while being detained”.

The drawings trace an arrest from the outside in. One series shows a man waving to his family as he leaves for work, then being arrested by ICE officers outside a grocery store. “On a normal day, a father goes to work, but does not know it will be his final goodbye. He leaves in his truck with his tools to a company called DH,” one caption reads. Other sketches depict the facility’s cells, hallways and communal areas, and an immigration court.

A Honduran father writes that he was arrested by ICE in San Antonio in August, after seven years in the US, and that he has no criminal record. He describes leaving a convenience store during a break from his job at a mechanic’s shop when a black vehicle sped toward him. “I thought it was someone driving drunk or under the influence of drugs, or someone who wanted to kill me,” he writes. He describes being pepper-sprayed and losing consciousness, then waking as officials splashed water on his face. “It was exactly at that moment that I discovered they were ICE,” he writes. The Guardian was unable to confirm his account.

In late September, a detainee wrote that he saw guards beat a Cuban man to the floor, leaving him bleeding, after the man tried to carry a piece of bread from the cafeteria back to his cell to eat “alongside his coffee”. Guards would not allow it, and the man quickly ate the bread in defiance before the confrontation escalated, according to the written account. Other detainees “only saw through glass how they beat their companion”, the detainee wrote. CoreCivic said the incident “was reviewed in coordination with ICE, and it was determined that excessive use of force was not used”.

Officials rejected the accounts. In a statement, a CoreCivic spokesperson said: “CoreCivic plays a limited but important role in the immigration system. We do not decide who is detained, for how long, or whether someone is released. Our job is to care for the people at our ICE-contracted facilities safely, humanely and with dignity while their cases proceed.” The Department of Homeland Security said “any allegations of subprime conditions or misconduct at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center are FALSE”, adding that detainees receive three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap and toiletries, have phone access to family members and lawyers, and are served meals evaluated by certified dietitians. DHS did not respond to any of the specific allegations of abuse; a spokesperson said the department was “not going to entertain unnamed allegations from the Guardian”.

The detainees also sent out a list of demands: faster processing of their immigration cases, reunification with their families, the release of children from other immigration centers and of detainees with developmental disabilities, and investigations into the rising number of immigrant deaths in ICE detention.

Osorio entered the US in 2023 on a legal tourist visa and requested asylum about a year later, after being threatened by criminal groups in Colombia, he and a cousin said in separate phone interviews. A Colombian judicial document shared with the Guardian shows a magistrate with the country’s special jurisdiction of peace found him to be an “indirect victim” of the country’s decades-long civil conflict. He received a work permit while his asylum case was pending. He was arrested in Texas in May, after he and a friend were pulled over by local law enforcement working with ICE — a practice he and his cousin described as an increasing trend. His attorney filed a habeas petition with a federal judge in June requesting his release while he fights his case; a federal judge in Texas denied the petition in late October, meaning he cannot be immediately released, and records show his asylum case has not been decided.

DHS, which wants to deport Osorio, said he entered the US legally in 2023 “but chose to violate our nation’s laws by refusing to depart by the required date” and that Osorio Garcia “will receive due process and remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his removal proceedings”. The department also said he was arrested in 2023 in Texas for driving while intoxicated; court and arrest records show he was never convicted in connection with the charge and that the case is “inactive”. DHS did not respond to follow-up questions.

“I do not know why migrants are treated in such an inhumane way,” Osorio said by phone from inside the facility. “We have so many stories here. I have heard some situations that are extremely difficult.” Of the immigration process, he said: “It’s a migratory process that is costing tears, the separation of families, the loss of so much money for families [trying to fight their cases] – it’s leading to death.” And of CoreCivic, he asked: “And how can a private company profit from all this?”

DaMareo Cooper, co-founder of the New York-based Center for Popular Democracy, said the writings “expose an entire system that strips people of their dignity, separates families and treats fundamental constitutional rights as optional”. “What is equally powerful is the extraordinary courage of those risking so much to speak out,” Cooper added. Alejandro Caceres, an organizer with the Austin Sanctuary Network, an immigrant rights group in Texas, said: “We know some community members in there right now – we get a lot of information about how bad it is.” He said he had also heard repeated complaints about alleged retaliation by guards, substandard medical care and food, and the use of solitary confinement at the facility.

The writings close with solidarity. When an immigrant is released from the facility, the other detainees say goodbye by clapping and shouting as loudly as they can, one testimony says. “Because, from here, no one leaves that easily,” one piece said. The men dedicated their notes and drawings “for those who will be here, for those of us who are here, and for those who left”, writing that “Being an immigrant does not mean you do not have rights.”