Crime & Justice · Oct 13, 2026ICE Watch: Approximately 500 participate in hunger strike at Folkston immigration detention center

ICE Watch & Accountability · Daily Update · October 13, 2026, 8:42 AM CDT

Where These Stories Happened

1. City of Rochester, New York; 2. Ocilla, Georgia; 3. Berkeley, California

Pins mark the town or city named in each report, not an exact address. Map data: OpenStreetMap contributors. Street photo (2024): Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Detention & Deaths

Approximately 500 participate in hunger strike at Folkston immigration detention center

Approximately 500 people in a Coastal Georgia immigration detention center are on a hunger strike, protesting conditions at the facility as well as what they say are violations of asylum protocols by U.S. authorities, according to family members and legal representatives.

Samantha Hamilton, senior litigation staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta (AAAJ), said most of the people participating in the civil disobedience came to the United States seeking asylum from authoritarian and repressive national governments. The hunger strikers say they were following the legal process for their immigration claims, yet have been at the privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Folkston for months or years awaiting judicial hearings. The hunger strike is the latest controversy at the Charlton County facility, which is run by The GEO Group and, despite numerous complaints about unsafe conditions, is expanding to become the largest ICE detention center in the nation.^[1]

Newport’s lawyers say feds using 'Dog ate my homework' excuse for not reaching detention center settlement

This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.

The city of Newport wants to settle its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but the federal government keeps dragging its feet. Nearly a year ago, a federal contractor expressed interest in creating a detention center at the Newport airport and the Coast Guard’s rescue helicopter was removed without notice. With no response from the federal government to confirm its plans, two separate lawsuits were filed.^[2]

Courts & Lawsuits

David Streever ICE Lawsuit Ruling: A Federal Court Just Reminded the Government That Harsh Words Aren’t Crimes

Officers from Homeland Security Investigations arrived at David Streever’s home in Rochester, New York, while he and his daughter were on vacation at Moomin World in Finland, one of those happy Scandinavian theme parks centered around cartoon characters.

The door was answered by his wife. The agents gave her a warning notice addressed to her husband, alerting him to the possibility that an email he had sent five months prior may have violated federal law. There was no bomb threat in the aforementioned email.^[3]

Trump continues to flout court orders by tying FEMA funding to ICE cooperation

As a result, the states claim they’re being strong-armed into cooperating with federal deportation efforts to receive nearly $1 billion in congressionally approved counterterrorism and emergency management funds — precisely the situation U.S. District Judge William Smith already deemed unlawful last year.

In September 2025, Smith blocked FEMA from enforcing new requirements that would have effectively withheld disaster aid from states with sanctuary immigration laws. A month later, Smith scolded the government for ignoring his order and trying to do it anyway. He reiterated that further comparable attempts to tie this aid to immigration enforcement would be unlawful.^[4]

Raids & Arrests

Orange County family seeks release of 19-year-old son detained by ICE

Last Wednesday, Maria Gallegos and Cesar Rios of Hillsborough spent hours in Charlotte waiting for their son, 19-year-old Isaac Gallegos, to emerge from what they understood to be a routine appointment related to their ongoing asylum case.

An officer eventually came out, carrying Isaac’s belongings, but Isaac never did. Maria began to weep, instantly knowing what happened — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained her son. Isaac graduated from Orange High School, where he was a captain on the varsity soccer team, in 2025.^[5]

‘We’ve been doing this since May’: ICE admits instant re-arrest strategy

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We have added it to a list of your favorite stories. Quick Read Jennifer Cortez’s husband was set to be released from immigration detention at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building the morning of Oct. 2. A federal judge ruled Yader Cortez Andino’s warrantless arrest was illegal and he should be released immediately.^[6]

Oversight & Policy

Howard County Launches Online ICE Activity Reporting Form

Howard County has rolled out an online form that lets residents report sightings of federal immigration enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the option to submit tips anonymously.

The form asks for the date, approximate time and location of an observed incident, and officials say it is meant to document activity rather than serve as an emergency reporting tool. What the Form Asks and Why It Exists According to WMAR-2 News, submitters will be asked to provide the date, approximate time and location of the observed incident, along with other details. Reports may be submitted anonymously, and the station notes that information shared on the form may be disclosable under the Maryland Public Information Act.^[7]

ICE is more active in Vermont. But federal data overstates it

New, widely-cited federal data points to a dramatic spike in Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Vermont during the summer, mirroring a national trend.

But that picture of ICE activity in Vermont appears to be misleading, according to a Vermont Public analysis of the same data. Figures obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA — and cited by outlets such as the New York Times — suggest that ICE agents in Vermont scaled up their enforcement operations in the spring and summer. The agency logged 124 arrests in Vermont through July, more than triple those carried out during all of 2025.^[8]

Primary Records

Check the government’s own records directly:

• ICE detainee death reporting (ICE’s own notices)
• DHS Office of Inspector General reports
• ICE online detainee locator

References

1. The Current. Approximately 500 participate in hunger strike at Folkston immigration detention center. ↩
2. NPR for Oregonians. Newport’s lawyers say feds using 'Dog ate my homework' excuse for not reaching detention center settlement. ↩
3. https://www.lawnews.co.uk/. David Streever ICE Lawsuit Ruling: A Federal Court Just Reminded the Government That Harsh Words Aren’t Crimes. ↩
4. – NJTODAY.NEWS. Trump continues to flout court orders by tying FEMA funding to ICE cooperation. ↩
5. The Daily Tar Heel. Orange County family seeks release of 19-year-old son detained by ICE. ↩
6. MPR News. ‘We’ve been doing this since May’: ICE admits instant re-arrest strategy. ↩
7. Hoodline. Howard County Launches Online ICE Activity Reporting Form. ↩
8. WBUR. ICE is more active in Vermont. But federal data overstates it. ↩

Methodology: ICE Watch & Accountability is compiled daily by scripts/ice_watch.py from named news reports published in the previous 36 hours. Passages in bold and in quotation blocks are verbatim from the cited report; nothing is paraphrased or generated by AI. Stories are grouped by keyword into sections, and a story already covered on Kemetic Minds in the past three days is skipped.

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