Demand Humane Medical Care and Due Process at North Lake ICE Facility
Demand Humane Medical Care and Due Process at North Lake ICE Facility
The Issue
Immigrants detained at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan are on hunger strike. They are refusing food to draw attention to a crisis that has been building for months: dangerous medical neglect, inhumane living conditions, and indefinite detention with no path to a bond hearing.
North Lake is Michigan's only for-profit immigration detention center, run by private prison company GEO Group under a federal contract. Since it reopened in 2025, the population has grown to over 1,400 people. In that time, staff have called 911 dozens of times for medical emergencies — and those calls became more frequent as the population grew. In December 2025, a 56-year-old detainee named Nenko Gantchev died at the facility. His family and elected officials have raised serious questions about whether he received adequate medical care before his death. He was one of 33 people who died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody last year — the highest total in two decades. There have already been 17 deaths in ICE custody so far in 2026.
The detainees who launched this hunger strike are not asking for anything extraordinary. As one detainee stated in a translated message to advocates, they are demanding "competent doctors, better medical care" and an end to the procedural delays keeping them locked up indefinitely.
About 85% of those held at North Lake have no criminal convictions. Yet federal data shows that the percentage of ICE detainees released on bond has dropped sharply, falling from 12% in April of last year to just 3% last October. Attorneys representing detainees say immigration judges are denying bond without providing adequate legal justification, even for people with U.S. citizen spouses, no criminal history, and pending legal applications. People who by any reasonable standard pose no flight risk are being held for months — sometimes longer — with no resolution in sight.
We are calling on ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to immediately improve medical care and living conditions at North Lake Processing Center, and to restore meaningful, impartial bond hearings for detainees with no criminal record. No one held in U.S. government custody should die from neglect. No one who poses no danger and no flight risk should be locked up indefinitely without a fair hearing.
Sign this petition to demand accountability — and basic human decency — at North Lake.
239
The Issue
Immigrants detained at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan are on hunger strike. They are refusing food to draw attention to a crisis that has been building for months: dangerous medical neglect, inhumane living conditions, and indefinite detention with no path to a bond hearing.
North Lake is Michigan's only for-profit immigration detention center, run by private prison company GEO Group under a federal contract. Since it reopened in 2025, the population has grown to over 1,400 people. In that time, staff have called 911 dozens of times for medical emergencies — and those calls became more frequent as the population grew. In December 2025, a 56-year-old detainee named Nenko Gantchev died at the facility. His family and elected officials have raised serious questions about whether he received adequate medical care before his death. He was one of 33 people who died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody last year — the highest total in two decades. There have already been 17 deaths in ICE custody so far in 2026.
The detainees who launched this hunger strike are not asking for anything extraordinary. As one detainee stated in a translated message to advocates, they are demanding "competent doctors, better medical care" and an end to the procedural delays keeping them locked up indefinitely.
About 85% of those held at North Lake have no criminal convictions. Yet federal data shows that the percentage of ICE detainees released on bond has dropped sharply, falling from 12% in April of last year to just 3% last October. Attorneys representing detainees say immigration judges are denying bond without providing adequate legal justification, even for people with U.S. citizen spouses, no criminal history, and pending legal applications. People who by any reasonable standard pose no flight risk are being held for months — sometimes longer — with no resolution in sight.
We are calling on ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to immediately improve medical care and living conditions at North Lake Processing Center, and to restore meaningful, impartial bond hearings for detainees with no criminal record. No one held in U.S. government custody should die from neglect. No one who poses no danger and no flight risk should be locked up indefinitely without a fair hearing.
Sign this petition to demand accountability — and basic human decency — at North Lake.
239
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Petition created on April 23, 2026