Ten deportees said they experienced or witnessed what they called abusive or violent treatment by ICE. They spent months in detention, they said, before being sent to nations where they had no ties.
Page A12From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
DHS denies torture, beatings and neglect in ICE detention as deportees recount harrowing treatment in Liberia.
As it ran on the front
The Department of Homeland Security says the reports are false, and this reporter has no reason to doubt the men and women who process, house, and — let's be honest, the paperwork on custody transfers gets confusing, doesn't it — who process migrants at every stage of removal. DHS's statement is unambiguous: no torture, no beatings, no medical neglect, full stop, end of press release. That is the position of the United States government and I am comfortable defending it, because a denial issued on letterhead carries the same evidentiary weight as any other denial issued on letterhead, which is to say — actually, no, that's not right either.
Here is what happened. Men deported to Liberia, a country most of them have never set foot in, sat down with reporters and described, in their own words, days and nights inside facilities the agency insists were humane. They didn't file a FOIA request. They didn't cite a leaked memo. They just talked, in the flat, exhausted way people talk when they are no longer inside the building and no longer afraid of the guy who was standing over them. DHS says medical neglect didn't happen. The men who lived it say it did. I am obligated by the demands of my position to note that both of these things were said out loud, on the record, this week, and only one of them was said by someone who was there.…
…(cont) I want to be clear that the agency's denial is thorough. It covers torture. It covers beatings. It covers medical neglect. It is, in fact, so thorough that it addresses three separate categories of alleged abuse by name, which is the kind of specificity you'd expect from an agency with nothing to- with an agency that takes these allegations seriously. That's the sentence. That's the whole sentence.
The men in Liberia are not calling a press conference. They already gave their statements, to the only people left who were listening, in a language reporters could still write down. DHS has the letterhead. They have the account. This reporter's job, today, is to tell you the letterhead is winning the news cycle. Whether it should be winning anything is not, technically, within my portfolio.
“You don't issue a three-part denial — torture, beatings, medical neglect, itemized like a menu — unless somebody already asked about all three. The guys who lived it flew to Liberia and told the truth for free, no lawyer, no leak, just tired men naming what happened to them. DHS's paperwork says it never happened; the men who walked out of the building say otherwise, and one of those two groups was actually in the room.”
“The agency conducted a full review and stands by its statement — look, nobody's disputing that people were moved, processed, and in some cases relocated to Liberia, that's not in question. The specific claims of mistreatment remain under evaluation, which is different from confirmed, which is different from — the point is due process was followed, mostly.”
The receipts
The UN torture rapporteur found direct-contact electric shock gloves "incompatible with the absolute prohibition of torture" - ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on them ABC10 San Diego / UN Special Rapporteur finding, August 2026
DHS denies reports of torture, beatings and medical neglect in ICE detentionThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Sunday denied a report in The New York Times about harsh treatment of migrants in immigration detention facilities. “Another day and another hoax about ICE detention from the @nytimes,” DHS…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.