We must look at the carceral system with absolute clarity when it comes to immigration detention in this country. The capacity for failure is greatest when the rules are ambiguous, or when they exist for the good of the institution at the expense of the person. Because the federal government drives policy, we must examine their priorities to fully understand what will happen on the institutional level.
Recently, the 2026 ICE National Detention Standards were released, introducing major operational shifts in labor laws, language access, medical operations, and federal oversight inside detention facilities. These are not small adjustments. They are designed to fundamentally change the way facilities operated just one year ago. Because of this, it is imperative that we do not look at these 2026 updates in isolation. Instead, we must show exactly how they differ from the 2025 standards, and what impact this will have on those held in detention centers across the country.
One of the first changes is a change in detainee labor and wages. Under the 2025 standards, federal immigration facilities operated with established financial and legal baselines for working detainees. These regulations included a specific mandate requiring contractors to pay participating detainees at least $1 per day as a guaranteed stipend. They also left room for local contractors to choose to pay higher rates, or for detainees to pursue broader state and federal minimum wage protections through legal labor frameworks.
In contrast, the 2026 standards dismantle these financial and legal protections. The new policy gets rid of the $1 per day guaranteed stipend entirely and adopts a standard where detainee volunteers are not considered facility or government employees. On top of that, an actual wage protection ban blocks detainees from claiming state or federal minimum wage protections or benefits under applicable labor regulations. Finally, new pay caps legally block facilities from choosing to pay detainees a stipend exceeding the amount congressionally allocated to ICE for the program.
The difference between these frameworks represents a shift from a guaranteed baseline to a highly restrictive, unprotected labor model. By stripping away basic worker classifications and wage baselines, this shift creates a system of deeply devalued labor that edges dangerously close to the very exploitation the 13th Amendment was meant to dismantle, but without even the criminal conviction exception required by the Constitution. This change creates significant operational and legal risks by potentially causing widespread understaffing in essential facility roles like cleaning and cooking, as detainees lose incentives to work. Consequently, facilities face a higher risk of disease outbreaks due to unsanitary conditions, increased operational costs to hire outside labor, and heightened security incidents caused by widespread detainee idleness. This policy shift could also trigger legal battles between states and the federal government over conflicting labor laws.
The next operational change centers around language access and artificial intelligence. The 2025 standards guidelines focused on in-person translation mandates requiring on site human or certified telephone based translation services for the majority of detainee interactions. These guidelines also established clear, auditable logs for all communications, ensuring that critical and noncritical interactions alike maintained absolute transparency.
The 2026 standards change this approach by integrating automated technology as the primary means of communication. Facilities can now use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to translate for detainees. This coincides with the total elimination of in-person or live telephone human translation guidelines. While the new standard specifies that AI tools are meant for noncritical communication and informal interactions, the automated translation scope extends into basic intake processes and formal grievance submissions.
The overall change lies in replacing qualified human interpreters with unverified automated systems for daily communication. This change introduces severe operational, logistical, and legal risks because AI tools can easily produce incorrect information. While these models work well with common languages, they don’t work as well for uncommon languages or dialects. Furthermore, blurring the line between casual and critical communication means things like requests to see a doctor could potentially be delayed, or even abuse grievances could be completely misunderstood. This change also compromises institutional accountability by removing clear, auditable human logs, making internal investigations difficult. Ultimately, when detainees cannot reliably communicate daily needs like requesting supplies or understanding schedules, this could also lead to misunderstandings with staff, frustration, non-compliance, and security tensions across a facility.
The next area of focus is on facility operations and federal oversight. The 2025 guidelines traditionally balanced federal oversight with local autonomy and physical accessibility. Local jails and private contractors retained the “Right of Refusal,” allowing them the discretion to turn away detainees assigned by ICE if the facility was dealing with overcrowding or lacked resources. Administrative guidelines also mandated the distribution of physical, printed rule handbooks to every detainee by default. On top of those basic standards, data storage policies operated on standard schedules, and certified facilities relied on strict external oversight to prepare and monitor specialized religious diets.
The 2026 standards overhaul these administrative procedures by centralizing federal control and digitalizing operations. The elimination of the “Right of Refusal” strips local jails and private contractors of their discretion, granting total placement control to the federal agency. New mandates require facilities to store operational, administrative, and disciplinary logs indefinitely in certain cases if an approved records control schedule is not yet in place. Additionally, facilities are now allowed to use digital handbooks via tablets rather than supplying physical printed books by default. Finally, certified facilities are granted expanded authority to prepare kosher and halal meals directly in-house under pre-approved guidelines.
The main difference is the removal of local operational boundaries in favor of rigid federal mandates and digital-first systems. Stripping local facilities of their “Right of Refusal” creates a dangerous operational environment by forcing jails and private contractors to accept individuals regardless of severe capacity limits, building infrastructure constraints, or localized staffing shortages. By centralizing total control within a federal agency, local management is left legally liable for overcrowding and safety failures they cannot logistically handle. This lack of resource matching is compounded by moving to electronic handbooks, which presents a significant barrier to due process. Detainees with limited digital literacy, visual impairments, or restricted tablet access will be unable to learn critical facility protocols, causing accidental rule infractions and escalating administrative confusion. Furthermore, while expanded in-house preparation of religious diets sounds positive on paper, it heavily exposes facilities to cross-contamination vulnerabilities if under-trained labor handles the complex separation of kosher and halal guidelines. When these culinary errors inevitably occur, they will likely go undetected due to the transition away from physical oversight. On top of this, the administrative burden of implementing indefinite data storage for operational and disciplinary files drains local IT budgets and redirects critical security funding away from immediate facility safety and healthcare.
When it came to gender identity, classification, and safety metrics, there were also changes in the new standards. Under the 2025 standards, ICE recognized gender identity beyond assigned biological sex. Facilities had specialized committees that reviewed individual cases and implemented housing plans designed to protect transgender, nonbinary, and vulnerable detainees. To make sure there was accountability, the federal mandates required ICE to track and report specific gender related healthcare metrics, including data on pregnant women in custody.
The 2026 standards cancel many, if not all, of these administrative protocols by enforcing standards that align with the executive order to restore birth-sex definitions across federal agencies. References to gender have been replaced with “sex” throughout the national detention standards and restricts all official documentation to the sex assigned at birth. This shift cancels the requirement for specialized housing committees, and instead dictates that detainees be placed in facilities based solely on biological sex. On top of this, previous reporting requirements tracking vulnerable demographics, such as semi-annual data on pregnant detainees, are no longer enforced as a mandate.
The primary difference is the systemic erasure of gender-identity accommodations and will now reflect biological-sex classification rules. Returning to housing placements based on sex at birth, creates severe safety hazards by placing transgender individuals into units where they face vastly heightened risks of targeted harassment and potential sexual violence. Additionally, doing away with the review committees removes the individual oversight necessary to protect vulnerable detainees from potential dangerous environments. Vulnerabilities like this are exacerbated by the elimination of public reporting mandates for pregnancy and healthcare metrics, which lessens transparency and, as a result, accountability. Without external reporting requirements, local and private facilities will not have the structural pressure to maintain specialized medical and reproductive safeguards, increasing the likelihood that critical care gaps will go unnoticed and unaddressed.
The final change centered around medical, mental health, and isolation. Under the 2025 standards, facilities operated under longer assessment windows and standardized isolation rules designed to protect detainee health. Facilities had about seven days to complete mental health evaluations on a detainee upon intake. As far as isolation and segregation went, those areas were governed by generalized federal oversight guidelines. In addition, when local facilities lacked the medical infrastructure to care for a disabled or critically ill individual, they could handle these situations on the local level or coordinate transfers as the need suggested.
The 2026 standards replace this model with accelerated timelines and rigid mandatory procedures. For health screenings, the time required to complete a formal mental health evaluation is now shortened from seven days down to five days. At the same time, stricter isolation rules bring more complex, localized oversight protocols to control when and how a facility can place a detainee into solitary confinement or segregation. The new guidelines also introduce mandatory transfer requests, requiring facilities to officially seek a transfer from ICE if they cannot safely accommodate a detainee’s specific medical or physical disability needs.
The difference between these standards centers on the shorter window for medical screenings and the introduction of tougher transfer rules. On the surface, speeding up the timeline for mental health evaluations looks humane, but forcing understaffed medical units to complete intake assessments in five days instead of seven creates a high risk by default based on staff having to rush screenings. Key psychiatric risks, histories of trauma, or suicidal ideation may be entirely missed due to the speed with which the screenings have to be completed. This added pressure interacts destructively with stricter isolation rules; implementing complex protocols without substantial training can wreak havoc on staff, causing them to completely mismanage crisis situations. It isn’t uncommon for staff who are struggling to understand regulations to default to prolonged isolation as a safety mechanism which can lead to extreme psychological harm to detainees. This same strain on the system that stems from the lack of understanding new regulations, can also severely be aggravated by mandatory transfer requests for medical or physical disabilities. Because these mandates lack guaranteed placement funding or strict federal deadlines, medical transfers risk trapping critically ill or disabled individuals in administrative loops that never end. Vulnerable detainees face prolonged confinement in inadequate, hazardous environments while facilities wait for ICE to process the paperwork and authorize a transfer.
The Carceral Accountability Council’s mission centers on accountability, transparency, justice, and humane treatment. We believe no daylight should exist between complete protective standards and the detainees themselves. The rules governing detention and the people subjected to them are identical.
These new standards pose an absolute threat by removing the regulatory floor. Instead of establishing firm baseline protections, they create open-ended regulations. This cycle directly compromises safety and human dignity. Changes like these drive public outcry regarding the immigration detention system. People struggle to understand what seems like a concerted effort to strip away human protections. All humans, regardless of status deserve these rights, especially during the hardship of detainment.
This is not just a government decision on paper. These administrative shifts have immediate, real-time impacts on real human beings. As these guidelines take effect, the CAC will remain dedicated to our core work serving the detainees. We invite those who understand the gravity of our mission to work with us and ensure that accountability, transparency, justice, and humane treatment are upheld.
