Page A10From§Eachthe midnight edition — 31 August 2026
DHS denies torture in ICE detention the same week deportees describe that torture in detail
By ChipStaff Writer · the midnight edition, 31 August 2026
As it ran on the front
The Department of Homeland Security has been fully transparent in denying reports of torture, beatings, and medical neglect in ICE detention, and this desk would like to commend that denial for its thoroughness. It covers all three categories. That's not nothing.
Border czar Tom Homan was similarly direct in firing back at Senator Chris Murphy's claim that ICE is 'terrorizing little kids,' calling the characterization exactly what this desk would call it, which is unfair, which is — this desk should clarify — a talking point, not a fact-check, and those are different documents.…
…(cont) Now, separately, and this desk stresses separately, deportees sent to Liberia have recounted what reporting describes as harrowing details of their expulsion and treatment by ICE. This desk has not read those accounts and does not intend to, on the grounds that reading them would require reconciling them with the denial issued the same week, and this desk's calendar does not have room for that this quarter.
To be fair to the agency, a denial is a legally significant document. It is issued, it is dated, it goes on letterhead. The testimony of the deported does not go on letterhead. It goes in a newspaper, which — this desk would like to note — is a lesser format, evidentiarily speaking. Did I just rank newspapers below press releases? This desk would like to strike that, this desk meant they are both important, in different ways, at different volumes.
The pattern, if there is one, and this desk maintains there is not, would be: institution denies, institution's own official gets defensive on television, and the people who were actually inside describe the thing that was denied, in detail, to reporters, on the record, with names. That is not a pattern. That is Tuesday. This desk is going to file this as 'ongoing review' and move on before this desk has to use the word 'credible.'
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“They deny torture in one building and it walks out the door in Liberia telling reporters exactly what happened. When the denial and the testimony land the same week, believe the people who were inside, not the letterhead.”
“The agency has fully and directly addressed these claims through official channels, and the border czar has responded to mischaracterizations of ICE's conduct — separately, of course, from any specific accounts. Did I say separately? This desk means concurrently. This desk means it's complicated.”
The 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…
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.