Tom Homan pushed back on claims ICE targeted parents at a school bus stop in Danbury, Connecticut, as DHS called the allegation politically motivated.
Page A3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
DHS denies torture, beatings and medical neglect in ICE detention; deportees recount harrowing treatment
As it ran on the front
The Department of Homeland Security has been unambiguous: reports of torture, beatings, and medical neglect inside ICE detention are false, a mischaracterization pushed by people who have never set foot inside a processing center — which, to be fair, is because visitation requests are routinely denied, but that's a scheduling issue, not a — well. It is what it is.
Let's be clear about the record. DHS says its facilities meet every applicable standard. Every applicable standard DHS itself wrote, audited by DHS, reviewed by DHS's own inspector general, who last quarter found — actually, let's set that aside. The point stands: this is a denial, and denials are, definitionally, denied.…
…(cont) Meanwhile, several dozen deportees flown to Liberia have spent the past week describing, in granular and remarkably consistent detail, the treatment they say they received before boarding that plane. Multiple accounts. Different detention centers. Overlapping specifics. That's not evidence of a pattern, that's — okay, it might be evidence of a pattern, but coordinated testimony from people who've never met each other is also, statistically, evidence of a pattern. So.
Then there's Border Czar Tom Homan, who this week took personal offense at Senator Chris Murphy's description of ICE as an agency that terrorizes little kids. Homan's response was forceful. Homan's response did not include the word no.
The agency's position is that the paperwork is fine, the intake logs are fine, the — there is no camera footage available for review, but if there were, it would also be fine. We stand by the men and women of ICE, who are doing a difficult job, a job that apparently requires denying, on the record, things that keep getting independently, separately, and identically described by the people it was allegedly done to.
Look. The agency processes people. Processing is not torture. Processing that produces matching, unprompted, cross-facility descriptions of beatings is — is also just processing. Processing some people didn't enjoy. That's different. That's legally, meaningfully different, and if you can't see that distinction, that's a you problem, not a paperwork-DHS-won't-release problem.
The agency's position remains unchanged: everything is fine, the paperwork is fine, and DHS stands by its statement, entirely, until the next one comes out.
“They deny it before anyone even finishes the sentence, and the deportees keep describing the same thing from different flights, different facilities, same specifics. That's not politics, that's paperwork lying to your face while the people it happened to are still standing there.”
“DHS has been incredibly transparent here, they've explicitly denied every single allegation, in writing, which is more than the activists have offered — did I say activists, I meant the sworn deportees, that's not the same thing, that's completely different, actually.”
The receipts
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.
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.