Disabled People are Being Mistreated in ICE Detention Facilities

Why is no one talking about it? Where's the media? Where's the public outcry? Another example of the pervasive nature of ableism and how society views disabled people as expendable.

Jun 08, 2025

I hadn’t planned to write another ‘political’ based article, but a few readers brought to my attention the plight of two disabled people currently suffering in ICE detention facilities.

When I dug deeper into their stories, I was shocked to discover how little media attention they were receiving.

This administration has been ‘flooding the zone’ since day one, overwhelming us with a continuous stream of horrors that make it nearly impossible to keep up. As a result, stories fall through the cracks. Injustices go unaddressed. Atrocities go unchallenged.

I completely understand how it happens, there’s simply so much to report on that inevitably things will get missed.

But I can’t allow the stories of Alma Bowman and Rodney Taylor to get lost in the shuffle. Not if I can prevent it.

Given the anti-ICE protests have been going on for two days in Los Angeles, this seemed like a good time to raise awareness about disabled people being detained by ICE as well as how the conditions in detention facilities can lead to disabilities.

We must all raise our voice and fight back. A journalist was shot with a non lethal round covering the protests in LA. He needs emergency surgery to repair the damage to his leg. The situation is escalating and disabled people will no doubt get caught in the cross fire.

Disabled individuals have been tossed to the wayside for far too long. We are treated as ‘acceptable losses’ when it comes to Covid and public health policies. Targeted by fascists who want to remove social supports like Medicaid and food assistance programs. Disregarded by the general public.

We have embraced eugenics, and many people don’t even realize how far down the slippery slope we’ve gone.

The ‘only the vulnerable’ need to worry about Covid line has morphed into ‘only very sick kids should die of measles’. It’s created a world where instead of showing compassion when someone dies of an infectious disease, the first question folks ask is ‘how many comorbids did they have?’ As though a certain number of pre-existing conditions make their death acceptable.

This shift, this narrative that insists over and over that disabled people are expendable, has given permission to treat us as ‘useless eaters’, a term originally used by the Nazis when they targeted disabled people during WWII.

Given how little the average person seems to care about disabled lives, it’s hardly surprising we aren’t hearing more about the inhumane and dangerous treatment of disabled people who find themselves detained by ICE.

So let’s talk about them. Let’s share their stories. Let’s speak out and raise awareness. Let’s ensure they aren’t forgotten.

Image Description: A photo of ICE agents standing outside someone’s home. Photo Courtesy of Human Rights Watch

Alma Bowman

Alma Bowman is a 58 year old disabled woman from Macon, Georgia. Her father was an American navy veteran, and met Alma’s mother while serving abroad.

During the first Trump regime, she was detained for thirty months in ICE custody. Despite being the daughter of a US veteran, she had her permanent residency revoked for writing $1200 in bad cheques twenty years prior. She had since paid the debt.

Her family argued that she is a US citizen because of her father, but the legal battle to get her citizenship recognized is still ongoing to this day.

When the Covid pandemic hit, she was released from ICE custody due to overcrowding, and she ended up being a whistleblower who worked with the government to expose atrocities committed against people within the detention facilities.

“She became a key witness and survivor to non-consensual procedures being committed by a doctor, including non-consensual gynecological procedures, against women in the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia (ICDC), which was investigated and condemned by the U.S. Senate and which has since closed.”1

Alma spent nearly three years of her life being detained without due process. Separated from her family, abused at the hands of detention centre employees and denied basic human decency.

Yet when she was released, she became an advocate. She used her real name. She stood up for injustice. She fought to protect others.

Whistleblowers like Alma should be protected, but as we know the current Regime targets anyone they see as a political threat or rival.

ICE has taken Alma again. She was complying with all conditions of her original release, yet when she showed up at the ICE Atlanta Field Office for her regular check-in, she was separated from her family and thrown back into custody.

She’s been held at the Stewart Detention Centre ever since.

I’m going to keep saying her name until she gets the attention she deserves. She needs to be released.

Photo Courtesy of Justice for Alma Bowman

Rodney Taylor

Rodney Taylor is a disabled double amputee suffering extreme medical neglect at an ICE detention facility in Georgia. He owns and runs a barber shop in Georgia where he’s considered a pillar of the local community. He became engaged to fiancé Mildred Pierre just ten days before ICE took him.

The reason he's detained? "A burglary conviction he received as a teen and which Georgia pardoned him for in 2010."2

When he was detained, he was only two days away from receiving new prosthetic legs.

His old ones require eight hours of charging, which the detention facility almost never provides.

He’s been given shoes that don’t fit the legs and he told The Guardian that trying to walk “felt like walking on concrete on my knees.” 3

He started struggling to get to the cafeteria for meals, but rather than help him access the prosthetics he needed, the facility offered a wheelchair without assessing whether or not he could actually push it (he can’t). He only has two fingers on his right hand, and has been experiencing pain and swelling in his thumb since being detained.

As a result, he’s gone without food. He has increasingly severe hip issues and his request for a medical leave to be assessed for new prosthetics was denied.

This is cruel and inhumane, and is being made easier because the Regime closed the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO). They were critical agencies meant to protect people in custody from exactly this type of neglect.

We already know disabled people have died at the hands of ICE. There are no doubt countless more who will never have their stories told.

These practices must be stopped. No one should be treated this way, regardless of citizenship, race, health status or any other metric. No one deserves this.

Rodney has been speaking out in an attempt to raise awareness of his own plight, as well as the suffering of others being held in the same facility.

Image Description: Photo of Rodney Taylor in his barber shop. He’s wearing a blue shirt and an apron and green hat. Photo Courtesy of 11 Alive

No One Should Be Subjected to These Conditions

I’m not a legal expert, nor am I well versed in US immigration policies. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to be, because this is about basic human decency. It shouldn’t be about their status, their previous offences or anything other than their right to be treated humanely.

What ICE is currently doing is not humane. The conditions their detainees are forced to live in amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Many are detained for years without due process. Others are placed on planes destined for supermax private jails in other countries, without any chance to say goodbye to their families or plead their case to remain in the country.

They are disappearing people. Kidnapping them. And yes, they are killing them.

In fact, on June 24th, 2024 the Physicians for Human Rights released a report that stated ICE has admitted to 68 deaths of people in their custody since 2017.

To be clear, those are only the deaths they admit to. The ones that could easily be tracked and traced. There are no doubt countless more.

What’s even more galling is the fact that the group found that most of the deaths were preventable.

Medical experts concluded that of the 52 deaths reported by ICE between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2021, that 49 deaths (95 percent) were preventable or possibly preventable if appropriate medical care had been provided. Only three deaths were deemed not preventable. 4

This doesn’t just effect disabled people, it effects every single person in their custody. They aren’t just harming those already disabled, they are more than likely causing more disability.

The lack of proper medical care, combined with unwillingness to mitigate Covid risk or other airborne infections, will result in people becoming disabled within the facilities.

In short, they’re torturing people, and they’re getting away with it. Why? Because many Americans have been incorrectly told that all their problems can be blamed on the ‘migrants’. They’re also told that disabled people are stealing their taxes, a drain on the system and not worthy of protection.

When you combine those two narratives together, it’s painfully easy to see why disabled people face a heightened risk of abuse at the hands of ICE.

What Can We Do?

I know it’s easy to feel hopeless right now. To despair over the state of the world and how difficult it can be to bring about meaningful change.

But we can bring about change. We can choose to be inspired by people like Alma and Rodney. People who spoke up at great personal risk and cost. People who refused to sit silently by while injustice was happening around them.

We too can refuse to be silent. We can raise our voices in whatever way we can. We can protest, we can boycott, we can relentlessly call elected officials and tell them that we categorically oppose the way immigrants are being treated.

If you’re disabled yourself and unable to protest or boycott, don’t feel like your voice doesn’t matter. There are still contributions to be made. Share this article on social media. Say Alma and Rodney’s names. Amplify the voices of independent journalists who are working hard to cover the atrocities being committed by ICE and the Trump regime. Speak out.

You can also form Neighbourhood ICE Watch groups to try and protect your community. There’s an excellent article in Teen Vogue about how and why these grassroots efforts are invaluable for protecting immigrants.

No matter what, remember that the majority of Americans don’t support these heinous policies.

The world is watching in horror and standing in solidarity with everyone who tries to fight back.

We are not a small group and our voices will be heard. If we use them in unison, if we agree that no one is expendable and everyone deserves basic decency, compassion and care, we can turn the tides.

Keep telling Alma and Rodney’s stories. Shout their names until they’re released. When MAGA inevitably tries to make it about their ‘crimes’ or their status, push back.

They want people scared to speak up. They want to make sure everyone knows that if you’re an immigrant, you’re not safe. No one will stand up for you.

So let’s stand up. I’m going to keep standing up until Alma and Rodney are released. Until ICE stops this reign of terror. And I’m asking my readers who are safe to do so to stand with me.

Have you been following the ICE news? Do you engage in any activism? Had you heard Alma and Rodney’s stories before now?

Please leave a comment and let’s brainstorm ways that our community can help all the disabled immigrants being targeted right now.

The Disabled Ginger

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