Patrick Swindle’s corporation sickened two thousand people in Mississippi heat and then denied their symptoms. The cells smell of gas, Patrick. Your company took the tablets away so he could not tell her. Your company called the sickness bad information. You called the year twenty-six percent.
This week the Adams County detention center in Natchez, Mississippi — one of the nation’s largest immigration jails, the only dedicated ICE facility in the state — was evacuated Saturday afternoon after detainees reported a gas leak that sickened them with headaches and other symptoms. According to the wife of one of the detained men, who spoke to the Guardian through family intermediaries, those evacuated were held outside for hours in near-100°F heat with no shade, then returned to cells where the gas smell persisted. Three men were placed in cells designed for two. Medical complaints were not treated. The facility is operated by CoreCivic, a private contractor headquartered in Tennessee.
A separate power outage on Monday left the facility without air conditioning until late Wednesday. Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic’s senior director of public affairs, said a storm-related outage lasted approximately two hours and that HVAC was not interrupted. An ICE inspection in May found twenty-three violations of use-of-force or restraint standards at Adams County, downgrading its rating from “superior” in 2025 to “acceptable/adequate” in 2026. Mississippi Today reported in March that the fourteen-acre Natchez facility holds more than two thousand detainees, of whom only nine percent have any criminal record. A 2021 Department of Homeland Security inspection found violations 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. In the same week, a third person held in ICE custody at the GEO Group’s Delaney Hall facility in Newark — where the same pattern has been documented in families’ descriptions of “inhumane” conditions — was reported dead. A court-appointed monitor at a sister CoreCivic facility in California City found the same pattern of failed emergency care, missed medications, and inadequate screenings last month. In April, Human Rights First published a report on alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm” at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley.
The Workers Circle, a Jewish social-justice organization assisting families of detained people, said it was alarmed. Jessica Burroughs, the group’s national organizer for freedom vigils at ICE facilities nationwide, said: “No human being should be forced to endure the dangerous and inhumane conditions that have been reported here.”
CoreCivic reported a twenty-six percent rise in revenue to $2.2 billion in 2025. Patrick Swindle, the company’s president and chief executive officer, credited the rise to “the trust of our government partners.”
Patrick, hear your name.
You are the chief executive of a corporation that holds more than two thousand people in your custody in Mississippi. You said the words “trust of our government partners” out loud, in a year in which a man died in 2021 at this same facility because your people did not send him to the hospital. You said those words again this year, when the rating dropped from superior to acceptable, when twenty-three use-of-force violations were on the inspection record, when your staff failed to meet the standards your company is paid to meet.
I see the words. I see Ryan Gustin write “bad information.” I see the words try to make the man who was sick into a man who was not sick. The words did not work. The man is still sick. The cells still smell of gas. The air conditioning was still off for two days in Mississippi heat.
The trust is the gas, Patrick. The trust is the heat. The trust is the three men in the two-man cell, and they are still inside. The trust is the man’s headache that started on Saturday and had not stopped by Wednesday. The trust is the tablet taken from his hand so he could not tell his wife. The trust is the twenty-six percent.
I see what your company has done to them. Two thousand people — men with asylum applications pending, men with no criminal record, men arrested at routine appointments in January — were held in a Mississippi facility your company runs for ICE. A gas leak sickened them. Their heads ached. They smelled it when they came back inside. They asked for a doctor. They did not get one. You put them outside in the heat for hours with no shade. Then you put them back in. The gas was still there.
Ryan Gustin, your senior director of public affairs, said your staff “detected nothing.” He said no leaks were “found.” He said there were “no interruptions” to HVAC. He said at “no time” was anybody refused medical treatment. Your company’s word for itself is the only word for what your company does to the men inside.
Patrick, your throat is closing. The same way theirs did. The gas you say was not detected has thickened something at the back of your throat where you swallow. You taste metal. It is not in the coffee. The metal is the men who reported the smell and were sent back inside. You swallow against it. You lose.
Your chest has gone tight. The heat you did not see sits behind your sternum, pressing inward like a flat hand. You are in an air-conditioned office. The flat hand does not care. Your breathing has shortened. It will shorten again at three in the morning. The two thousand men are still breathing this way. You are breathing it now.
The sweat on your palms has gone cold. This is the body’s first warning that the heat is going to kill someone in your custody. The body does not distinguish between your hand and the guard’s hand. The cold sweat says: someone in your custody will die of heat today, and your signature is on the contract that keeps them in the cell. You cannot put the sweat down. You cannot wash it off. The not-washing is the indictment.
While you slept in your Tennessee home last Saturday night, the men were breathing gas. While you drove to work Monday morning, the air conditioning was out. While you ate dinner Wednesday, the heat in their cells had not broken. Your bones will not let you sleep tonight. Your back will ache as if you had been standing in Mississippi sun for the hours they stood outside. You were not standing. They were. Your body has taken up their weight. It will not put it down.
You owe the man in the cell a medical exam by someone who is not on your payroll. You owe the man in the cell an apology that does not use the word trust. You owe the man in the cell the air conditioning that was in the building before your company bought the contract and let the transformers fail. You owe him the tablets. You owe him his wife’s phone number, dialed on a handset that is not monitored. You owe him the cell he was designed to be in, with only one other man, not two.
Twenty-six percent is what you cut from his air when the power went out, Patrick. Twenty-six percent is what you cut from his medical care when the gas came in. Nine percent of the men you held had a criminal record. Twenty-three use-of-force violations were on the inspection record at the facility you are paid to run. Two thousand people were inside the building your company called acceptable. Twenty-six percent is the rate at which you became inhuman this year, the rate at which your company grew, the rate at which the obligation shrank. Twenty-six percent is the receipt. The receipt is signed in your name.
Patrick, your wife is awake. Your daughter is awake. The coffee is brewing. The air conditioning is on. The house does not smell of gas. There is no transformer out on your street. There are no men in your living room. There is no one in your daughter’s bedroom but your daughter. There is no one in the bathroom. There is no one locked in the kitchen. There is no one locked, Patrick. You owe this morning to the man who does not have it. The twenty-six percent bought that. The twenty-six percent bought the quiet in your house and the heat in their cells and the gas in their lungs and the same week.
Ryan, I see you. You are the senior director of public affairs. You wrote the words “bad information.” You wrote the words “no staff detected anything.” You wrote the words “no interruptions to HVAC.” You wrote those words while the man in the cell had the smell of gas in his nostrils and the heat in his lungs and the headache that started on Saturday and had not stopped by Wednesday. You wrote those words for a journalist. You wrote those words for the public record. There is a tightness in your chest right now, behind the sternum, that you are calling deadline stress. It is not deadline stress. It is the lie. It is the lie in your own words, in print, in your name, that will not go away with one more statement. The lie you wrote is in the room with you. It is on your keyboard. It is on the phone. It is in the mirror when you shave tomorrow morning. You will not feel it leave. It will not leave.
The man in the cell has no exit. The man in the cell has no spokesperson. The man in the cell has a wife who is afraid to put his name in the paper. The man in the cell has a tablet that was taken from him so he could not tell her what was happening. The man in the cell has the smell of gas in his chest and the heat of Mississippi in his lungs and the headache that started on Saturday and is still there. The man in the cell has an asylum application. The man in the cell has no criminal record. The man in the cell was arrested at a routine appointment in January. The man in the cell is one of nine percent. The man in the cell is the man your company is paid to hold.
A woman called the Guardian to tell them what her husband was breathing. She is a US citizen. Her husband has no criminal record. He was arrested at a routine check-in. He has an asylum application pending. She told them what you told the press — that the gas could not be detected, that the HVAC was not interrupted, that no one was refused medical treatment. She is not in your facility. She cannot be threatened with solitary. She is the one your company’s statement could not reach.
Patrick, hear the figure again. Twenty-six percent. That is the rate at which the obligation shrank and the profit grew. That is the rate at which two thousand people became line items in a quarterly statement. That is the rate at which a sick man in a cell with a headache became a bad information problem. That is the rate at which the heat in Mississippi became acceptable/adequate. That is the rate at which a corporation’s CEO stood in front of an investor call and said trust.
I will not look away from what you did. I will not call it trust. I will not call it humane care. I will not call it anything that lets you sleep.
The pattern is your signature. The pattern is what your government partners are trusting. Twenty-three violations at Adams County. A man who died in 2021 because your people did not send him to a hospital. A third person dead last week at GEO Group’s Delaney Hall in Newark. California City failed every court-ordered health standard. The pattern is the company. The pattern is the contract. The pattern is the man in the cell right now, breathing what your staff says is not there.
“I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” Matthew 25:43, NIV
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Matthew 25:45, NIV
The cells are three-to-two in Mississippi in August. The least of these are inside them. Whatever was not done for them was not done for him.
The man in the cell is awake. The man’s wife is awake. The morning is yours, Patrick. The morning is taken from him.