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Rest in Peace, Nenko Stanev Gantchev

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We are devastated to hear of the preventable death of Nenko Stanev Gantchev on Monday at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin. No one should have to die behind those walls.

And we are deeply troubled, but not surprised, by the echoes of past events at this facility. In recent weeks, we’ve heard many disturbing reports of inadequate medical care and outbreaks of contagious illnesses at North Lake. Whatever the full story of Nenko’s death may be, what we know for sure is that prisons and detention centers, by their nature, create the conditions for medical crises to develop and pose grave threats to the health of incarcerated people and the communities around them. Detention is deadly.

We saw this in 2020, when the GEO Group’s response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic included denying access to essential protective equipment, giving incarcerated people false information, and punishing hunger strikers by shutting off their clean water. This mismanagement, compounded by the Bureau of Prisons’ reckless decision to continue chaotic transfers from one facility to another, led to multiple deaths at North Lake.

At that time, the facility was a federal immigrant-only prison—another facet of the same deportation machine—and the BOP had a national map that purportedly showed COVID cases among the population in federal custody. For months, as desperate families sought updates on their loved ones, North Lake was not on the map. It was a shadow prison. Now it is an ICE detention center, and, needless to say, medical care for people held there has not improved. The lack of appropriate care and other appalling conditions faced by people caged there for profit by the GEO Group are emblematic of the U.S. immigration detention system and its inherent terror and cruelty.

On November 1st, the Day of the Dead, we held a vigil in Grand Rapids and joined immigrant advocates around the country in honoring 25 lives lost in ICE custody since the beginning of the second Trump administration. We fear that this number will continue to rise until we collectively free them all. As we work to find answers and tangible next steps, we must remember that there is no good reason for North Lake or any such facility to exist, that scapegoating our immigrant neighbors is not a solution for anyone, and that a world that affirms everyone’s safety, dignity and humanity is possible.

¡Nenko Stanev Gantchev, Presente!

PRESS RELEASE: Amid Punitive Cancellation of Family and Attorney Visits, Hundreds Again Rally in Solidarity with Immigrants Held in Baldwin Detention Center

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For Immediate Release: Monday, September 8th, 2025

Baldwin, MI — On Saturday, September 6th, for the second time this summer, over 200 members and supporters of No Detention Centers in Michigan, a statewide coalition, gathered outside the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, formerly known as the North Lake Correctional Facility. Attendees traveled from across the state and the region to show concern and solidarity with the hundreds of immigrants who are now held in Baldwin for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the GEO Group, the Florida-based private company that owns the prison. The GEO Group had earlier informed people detained at North Lake that family visits would be cancelled for the day, following the announcement of the demonstration.

“Cancelling family visitation is a cruel, punitive and arbitrary response,” said Mindy Domke, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan, who noted that attorney visits had also been described as “unavailable” until Sunday. “The GEO Group did not have to do this. They are looking for any excuse to isolate people even further, extending their fundamental practice of cutting off our immigrant friends and loved ones from their support networks and the outside world. It’s yet another reminder of why we oppose the system of immigration detention in the first place.”

In the first three months since North Lake reopened under an ICE contract, reports have begun to emerge of harsh conditions that reflect longstanding and disturbing trends in U.S. detention facilities, with immigrants describing inadequate food and delays in their legal cases resulting in indeterminate confinement. Saturday’s demonstration highlighted the voices and stories of several people detained both at North Lake and at related facilities in the Midwest and beyond, as the Trump administration continues an unprecedented expansion of ICE operations with threats over the weekend to send federal troops to Chicago. Organizers shared additional statements from family members and loved ones of immigrants in detention, encouraging supporters to donate to their fundraising campaigns and to return to Baldwin for a sustained witnessing presence near the facility in the future. Members of multiple faith traditions participated in the rally.

“The members and movements of Fountain Street have stood beside you and will continue to stand beside you,” Rev. Nathan Dannison of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids told the assembled crowd in a recorded message. “You have allies in the faithful people of Grand Rapids. Any Christian who knows their Bible can tell you, somewhere inside the North Lake facility, a baby is being born into a manger. Somewhere inside the North Lake concentration camp, the soldiers of GEO Group are nailing Jesus Christ to the cross. Your actions today will serve as a testimony to our grandchildren—that we refused. We say, Basta! Enough!”

First built in 1999, North Lake was last open under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to incarcerate people who were not U.S. citizens and who had been convicted of federal crimes. The prison shut down for the fourth time in 2022 following an executive order from the Biden administration that ended contracts between private prison companies and the Department of Justice, only to reopen in mid-June as the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest.

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No Detention Centers in Michigan is a statewide coalition organizing to abolish immigration detention and migrant incarceration in Michigan and beyond.

PRESS RELEASE: Over 30 Groups Sign Open Letter Urging Governor Whitmer to Reject Federal Funds for New Detention Centers, End State Collaboration with GEO Group

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​​​​​​For immediate release: Tuesday, August 5th, 2025

Lansing, MI – Today, over 30 organizations predominantly based in Michigan sent an open letter to Governor Gretchen Whitmer calling for a public commitment to reject funds recently made available to states by the federal government for the construction of new immigration detention centers.

Drafted by the No Detention Centers in Michigan coalition (NDCM), the letter comes in the wake of the announcement last month of a “detention support grant program” operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with $608 million available for the construction of facilities modeled after the recently built prison camp in the Everglades. This Florida camp has already seen multiple lawsuits challenging rights violations, with immigrants imprisoned there reporting inhumane conditions including a lack of access to water, insufficient food, and religious discrimination.

“Conditions such as these,” the letter notes, “are endemic to the U.S. immigration detention system. They will only worsen as the Trump administration continues its push for an unprecedented expansion of the detention and deportation machine, with increasing reports nationwide of death, medical neglect, discrimination, abuse, and punitive transfers. […] We know that whatever new prisons are built will come with their own incentives to be filled, and that the continued growth of this cruel apparatus represents a key facet of an emboldened white nationalist program.”

The ongoing expansion of the immigration detention system has involved the allocation of over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and the reopening of many previously shuttered carceral facilities, including the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin. After a chaotic and deadly stint as a federal immigrant-only prison beginning in October 2019, North Lake shut down in 2022, only to reopen with an ICE contract in June 2025 as the largest detention center in the Midwest and one of the largest in the country. Immigrant advocates in Michigan have continued to report escalated raids and abductions by ICE over the course of recent months in connection with these broad trends and with the reopening of the Baldwin prison. NDCM’s letter accordingly highlights further concerns regarding Governor Whitmer’s record on immigration justice, including the collaboration under her leadership between the state-funded Michigan Works! agency and the Florida-based GEO Group on hiring staff for North Lake.

“The Trump administration’s current attempt to weaponize FEMA as an additional tool of mass imprisonment and deportation,” NDCM’s letter to Governor Whitmer states, “is emblematic of a white supremacist agenda that prioritizes the sadistic scapegoating of immigrants over the provision of resources needed for all people’s safety and flourishing. We urge you to reject this agenda by making a public commitment not to participate in FEMA’s detention grant program, and we call on you to ensure that Michigan Works! will no longer collaborate with the GEO Group to cage human beings in Michigan for the profit of GEO’s shareholders.”

“The last thing Michigan needs is more prisons for immigrants or for anyone else,” said Richard Kessler, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “It’s already unacceptable that Michigan Works! is funneling taxpayer money and resources toward the GEO Group so they can cash in on tearing families apart and locking up our immigrant neighbors in Baldwin. The news about FEMA is another reminder that private prisons aren’t the only problem. What allows companies like GEO to swoop in and profit from suffering is the agenda set by the federal government. And it’s very clear to us that this administration will go after immigrants with whatever methods they can. We hope the governor will take a strong position against ICE and the GEO Group’s attacks. Either way, our communities will keep fighting back together.”

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No Detention Centers in Michigan is a statewide coalition organizing to abolish immigration detention and migrant incarceration in Michigan and beyond.

PRESS RELEASE: GEO Group to Reopen Shuttered Michigan Prison as an ICE Detention Center – One of the Largest ICE Facilities in the Country

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For Immediate Release: Thursday, March 20, 2025

Contact: Detention Watch Network, media@detentionwatchnetwork.org //
No Detention Centers in Michigan, NoDetentionCentersMI@gmail.com

Baldwin, MI — Today, the GEO Group announced a new contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the GEO-owned North Lake Correctional Facility (North Lake) in Baldwin, Michigan. North Lake closed in 2022 as a result of Biden’s executive order to end the use of private prisons by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). With a capacity to detain 1,800 people, North Lake will become one of the largest ICE detention centers in the country. North Lake is among several shuttered BOP private prisons that have been converted into ICE detention centers over the years. This news is the latest development in Trump’s massive immigration detention expansion plan, which is attempting to triple the immigration detention system’s capacity.

North Lake was previously used by the BOP as a segregated immigrant-only prison. The reopening of the facility shines a light on a critical flaw of Biden’s 2021 executive order which excluded the largest share of privately operated detention facilities in the federal system: ICE detention centers. A 2023 report by Detention Watch Network and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center detailed how jails and prisons nationwide will close for one purpose, only to reopen and incarcerate a different group of people, creating a “Carceral Carousel.” 

“GEO Group and other private contractors are teeming over Trump’s continued expansion of ICE detention and particularly at the prospect of cashing in on their vacant prisons, like North Lake, that were recently forced to shutter,” said Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director of Detention Watch Network. “The perverse financial incentives are glaring as GEO Group stands to generate in excess of $70 million in annualized revenue from North Lake, at the expense of people’s lives and a small community that has been forced to rely on a carceral economy. Trump’s cruel detention and deportation agenda proliferates across government agencies and the private sector, as immigrants are locked up in abysmal conditions in local jails, federal prisons, military bases, and privately owned facilities, continuing an infinite loop of profit and cruelty at the expense of people’s lives.”

The group No Detention Centers in Michigan, composed of immigrant justice advocates from across the state, have documented inhumane conditions at North Lake and previously called out how GEO Group targets rural communities to deepen their dependency on carceral economies, including Baldwin. In 2020, two years before the facility’s closure, there were six documented hunger strikes and the tragic story of Jesse Dean. Dean spent 26 years behind bars, including time at North Lake, before he was transferred into ICE custody in 2020. Weeks later in ICE custody, after repeatedly notifying detention staff of severe pain, he died of a bleeding ulcer and hypertension. 

“In the most egregious way, Dean’s case illustrates how medical neglect is inherent to incarceration, whether it’s BOP custody, ICE custody, or a combined partnership. The ‘Carceral Carousel’ that people are forced to endure can be deadly,” said JR Martin with No Detention Centers in Michigan. “Lives are in jeopardy. We denounce the reopening of North Lake and know that our communities are worth more. There is a crucial need to transition communities reliant on jails and prisons away from carceral economies and toward sustainable, well-paying, and dignified industries that will provide meaningful work and resources, without causing harm and furthering Trump’s cruel anti-immigrant agenda.”

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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.

No Detention Centers in Michigan is a statewide coalition organizing to abolish immigration detention and migrant incarceration in Michigan and beyond.

PRESS RELEASE: Over 50 Groups Sign Open Letter Against Proposed Reopening of North Lake Prison in Baldwin as ICE Detention Center

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For immediate release: September 26, 2022

Contact: No Detention Centers in Michigan, NoDetentionCentersMI@gmail.com

Baldwin, MI – Today, over 50 organizations from around the state of Michigan and the country sent an open letter to President Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Senator Gary Peters calling for an end to the expansion of immigration detention and for the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin to remain closed. This letter follows a recent proposal from Michigan Representatives Bill Huizenga and John Moolenaar to repurpose the facility as an ICE detention center.

“We are deeply troubled by this proposal,” the letter states, “because it follows a recent pattern of actions from the Biden administration contravening its stated goal of ending the use of private facilities for detention, because we know that ICE operates a system of abusive and inhumane detention centers across the country, and because the presence of this prison in Baldwin has been disastrous for decades.”

Drafted by the No Detention Centers in Michigan coalition, the letter details the troubled history of the Baldwin facility, currently due to close on September 30th, and the recent national trends that point to the possibility of its reopening with an ICE contract. The signatories include over 20 groups based in Michigan and over 30 nationally active organizations focusing on immigration and racial justice.

North Lake, a private prison owned and managed by the Florida-based GEO Group, has closed and reopened multiple times since its construction in 1999. In its most recent incarnation, from October 2019 through September 2022, the facility contracted with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes.

In keeping with the history of immigrant-only prisons run by the GEO Group, this period of less than two years has seen numerous accounts of inhumane conditions, medical neglect, and violent mistreatment endemic to the immigration detention system. Six documented hunger strikes took place at North Lake over the course of 2020, primarily led by Black immigrants demanding medical care, better food, and an end to discriminatory confinement in the Restricted Housing Unit. In May 2020, more than 45 relatives and loved ones of people incarcerated at North Lake signed a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons, demanding increased transparency and a recognition of the GEO Group’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis.

The Biden administration issued an executive order in January 2021 purporting to end the federal government’s use of private prisons, setting the stage for the facility’s closure later this month. But immigrant advocates have pointed to a pattern of similar facilities ending their BOP contracts only to reopen as detention centers, while the number of immigrants held in ICE custody has continued to rise since President Biden took office, despite campaign promises to curtail detention. Eighty percent of the immigrants detained by ICE are held at facilities run by private companies. In June, Michigan Representatives Bill Huizenga and John Moolenaar publicly requested that North Lake be converted into a detention center.

“In calling for an ICE contract to bail out the GEO Group in Michigan yet again,” the letter from NDCM affirms, “Huizenga and Moolenaar seek to capitalize on the human misery caused by the organized abandonment and exploitation of working people both within the United States and beyond its borders. […] We refuse to let ICE and GEO expand their violence further into Michigan, and we call on the Biden administration to extend Executive Order 14006 to explicitly prohibit the use of private facilities for immigration detention as a first step toward phasing out all ICE detention.”

“This prison has already caused enormous suffering and has never fulfilled GEO’s promises to the people of Lake County,” said Oscar Castañeda, a member of No Detention Centers in Michigan. “Now the federal prison contract is finally ending, but we’ve seen that GEO will exploit any opportunity to make a profit. When it comes to the immigrant detention system, the Biden administration has not kept its word. We’re not going to let ICE expand here without a fight. We want to make sure that the loopholes allowing for the expansion of detention are closed and that this time, North Lake stays shut down for good.”

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No Detention Centers in Michigan is a statewide coalition building power through collective action to abolish immigration detention and migrant incarceration in Michigan and beyond.

“It’s Getting Worse & Worse”: North Lake, July 2021

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Speaking on July 7th, 2021, an immigrant incarcerated at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin describes deteriorating conditions as the prison nears a potential 2022 closing date and GEO Group administrators cut more corners than ever. Recently, fearing a protest among the incarcerated population, the administration put the whole prison on lockdown for three days. We will continue to share updates as we get them.

This recording has been edited for length. A transcript is below.

#ShutDownGEO #FreeThemAll

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: “I’m pretty sure they know that they’re closing. People complain about it because the food is horrible, they give you less and less food, they don’t—they always, like, shorted us on toilet paper.

They never want to help. Like they never want to give you medication or anything like that. They just really, like, really trying to save money. A lot of people suffering from headaches and stuff like that because they never have enough stuff to give us. They give us a tiny little bit of food.

They give us like fake meat—I don’t know what kind of meat is that, but nobody eat it. It smells horrible.

They didn’t want to give me my medicine anymore. Because they say they sell it in commissary. The one in commissary doesn’t help. The commissary’s super expensive, way expensive, I mean, they want to make money out of us.

It’s pretty bad. And it’s getting worse and worse, like, they getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. We never have enough toilet paper. We always got to be begging them to give us toilet paper. We don’t have paper towels, we don’t have, like, anything that like a regular prison has.

The other day that we say we were going to protest, they lock us all down. For three days, everybody. The whole prison! They keep sending people to the SHUs. They don’t want you to say anything.”

Vaccines at North Lake

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Immigrants incarcerated at the North Lake Correctional Facility finally received the COVID-19 vaccine last month, after a year of disastrous mismanagement and neglect on the part of the GEO Group which has resulted in extensive suffering and fear throughout the facility and at least two deaths. We continue to mourn the loss of Félix Repilado Martínez and Chi Cuong Hoang, who should never have been locked up in Baldwin in the first place and who passed away last year, as well as Jesse Jerome Dean, who died at the Calhoun County Jail in February almost immediately after being transferred away from North Lake.

These vaccines should have come much earlier; and, given GEO’s long record of secrecy, abuse and deceit, we strongly doubt that the numbers of COVID cases and deaths that have been reported at North Lake reflect the reality of the situation. As the article linked above also notes, COVID cases at the facility don’t factor into the Lake County totals, though vaccinations do. While we welcome this overdue news, there is no way to deny the immense harm that North Lake has caused both the people incarcerated there and the wider community in Lake County, and this facility can’t be shut down soon enough.

#ShutDownGEO

#FreeThemAll

Rest in Peace, Jesse Jerome Dean, Jr.

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Along with Detention Watch Network, we are mourning the loss this month of Jesse Jerome Dean, Jr., a victim of entrapment by the federal government who served 30 years in prison on drug-trafficking charges and who consistently professed his innocence. He was recently imprisoned at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin until December 31st, 2020, and was then seized by ICE and held in immigration detention at the Calhoun County Jail until he died on February 5th. In their press release announcing his death, ICE misspelled his name.

“Despite […] very detailed showings of both my actual and legal innocence and the fraud that was perpetrated upon me and the court,” Jesse wrote in 2008, “I remain imprisoned; each and every court that has reviewed my claims has denied me relief, ignoring their own laws, the facts and the truth!” His full statement can be read here.

The North Lake Correctional Facility had already claimed at least two lives in the last year. Now another immigrant barely made it out of North Lake only to die a month later in ICE detention at a Michigan county jail. This terrible news comes as a reminder not only that shadow prisons like North Lake must be shut down, but that the entire immigrant detention apparatus of which North Lake is a part must be dismantled. #FreeThemAll

North Lake Must Be Closed Now!

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Joe Biden’s recent executive order reinstating the Obama administration’s plan to phase out federally operated private prisons reflects only one small part of the struggle against incarceration and immigrant detention. The order doesn’t affect private immigrant detention centers (which Biden’s pre-election platform also singled out for closure). Shutting down private prisons alone, moreover, will not address the crisis of mass incarceration. But it is nevertheless essential that private prisons like the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin be closed—and not just when the GEO Group’s contract runs out years from now, but immediately.

The horrors of the past year and the courageous organizing efforts of immigrants locked up in Baldwin have made this very clear. “This place is unbelievable to humankind,” one person incarcerated at North Lake told us last spring. “We’ve begun to be sentenced by death,” another said. Our playlist of recorded calls from the facility in 2020 includes testimony from multiple hunger strikes and reports of medical neglect, staff refusing to take COVID concerns seriously, vindictive use of solitary confinement and water shutoffs, sick people disappearing from units with no one knowing their fate, guards using pepper spray to force the ending of a peaceful strike, and more.

Between April and November 2020, prisoners at North Lake launched at least six separate hunger strikes to demand adequate food, medical care, and an end to racist abuse, in part due to the Bureau of Prisons’ and the GEO Group’s utter mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis. This has resulted in at least two deaths at the facility so far. Terrible working conditions have led staff to quit in large numbers, making the atmosphere even more chaotic.

In an article from January, Village President Jim Truxton of Baldwin acknowledges none of this. He praises GEO and claims that “none of [his] friends and acquaintances complain that they feel they’re in danger.” But Truxton personally profits from this immigrant incarceration, because, by his own admission, he owns GEO stock. His statements and the GEO Group’s claim that Biden’s executive order is “a solution in search of a problem” are obscene.

People who have experienced the immense violence of this facility, along with their families and loved ones, have been trying to alert the world ever since they got there. In addition to the testimony of the many calls and letters NDCM has received, Felipe De La Hoz detailed this pattern of violence in an August 2020 article for The Intercept. The article describes the life and illness of Félix Repilado Martínez, who wrote “I need to see the doctor soon is possible” a month before he died from complications of COVID-19. GEO lied about the circumstances of his death. His blood is on their hands.

In the fight against the carceral state, closing private prisons is just the beginning. But there’s no question that facilities like North Lake need to be closed.

“They Want to Keep It Under the Rug”: Conditions at North Lake, Fall 2020

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As the political situation beyond prison walls fluctuates day by day, conditions at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin remain unacceptable, and even continue to deteriorate. Last week one of the immigrants incarcerated at North Lake told us the food was getting worse and worse; the coffee tastes “like rotten wood”; medical issues take weeks to receive attention; and staff have been talking about at least one incarcerated person “getting super sick again.” The number of COVID-19 cases reported at North Lake on the Bureau of Prisons’ online resource page has not changed for months, but this by no means indicates an absence of cases. Sometimes days have passed without the BOP even adjusting the date.

They want to keep these conditions under the rug, but we will keep exposing and challenging the horrors of this prison until it’s closed down and the people held inside are free.

A transcript is below. The recording has been edited for length.

#FreeThemAll #ShutDownGEO

TRANSCRIPT:

“I don’t know, it’s—they say it’s breaking down again, because they separated the people again. And the problem that a lot of people are having here, they’re not given enough food. We, like, been complaining about it—they refuse to give us real food. It’s getting out of control, you know, a lot of people get headaches. But they don’t … they just don’t care. The food is just getting worse and worse, every day that goes by. I don’t know if they’re running out of money, I don’t know what’s going on, but the food is getting worse and worse. And you cannot protest with them, because they always threaten you: ‘Don’t do this, because you’re gonna make it worse for yourself.’

They try to give us coffee, the coffee taste like dried wood. Like a rotten piece of wood, that’s the taste of the coffee.

The staff members over here are not trying to help you, they never, like, have an answer for you. They just—they isolate us, and we don’t have a voice over here, pretty much.

They say somebody got super sick again. That’s what the staff are saying, and they’re really short on staff, you know what I’m saying, they don’t, I mean—it’s pretty horrible here. We get treated like we’re not human beings.

Like, a person would have like a high fever. And you go and ask them for some Tylenol, and like, ‘Get a sick a call,’ and then the sick call take about a week, for them to get you to medic. They isolate us, they don’t care—like, they never have an answer for you. They refuse to give you the right information; they don’t want to.

Pretty much they’re using this prison like a big warehouse over here, you know what I mean? We don’t have none of the stuff that we’re supposed to have. Our voices are not heard. People like really mistreat us.

They say they’re not making move-ins, but they still bringing in people to the prison. Yeah, they’re still bringing people. We spend a lot of time in our cells because it takes them so long to count, you know what I mean?

I also talked to a lot of people that quit here. They straight-up told me to my face that the reason why they were quitting is because they don’t want to be punished for something, ’cause it’s like, a lot of the people here are, like, not bad people. And it’s not humanely, the way we’re being treated, and I don’t—like I said, we don’t have a voice. They don’t want nobody to know what’s going on over here, they don’t want nobody to know. They want to keep it under the rug.”