An abrupt decision on October 3 left thousands of ICE detainees without access to vital medical care -- a crisis that is ongoing.
For more than two decades, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) played a limited but essential role in ensuring that people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received necessary medical care. When an ICE detainee needed medication or medical treatment outside ICE facilities, the VA Financial Services Center processed those claims for reimbursement. ICE paid the VA to provide this service, so that no resources were diverted from veterans.
But then, according to previously unreported ICE documents, the VA "abruptly and instantly terminated" its agreement with ICE on October 3. According to the partially redacted documents, which were quietly posted to a government contracting website on November 12, the termination left ICE with "no mechanism to provide prescribed medication" and unable to "pay for medically necessary off-site care." Among the services ICE said it could not provide were "dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy."
The situation was described by ICE as an "absolute emergency" that needed to be resolved "immediately" to "prevent any further medical complications or loss of life."
The documents detailed the justifications for why ICE was seeking no-bid contracts to replace the services previously provided by the VA. According to government contracting records, ICE signed two no-bid contracts on October 25. However, the ICE Health Service Corps website indicates that the new systems are not yet functioning and cannot yet process claims. Providers are instructed to "hold all claim submissions while we work to bring the new system online."
In the interim, it is unclear how or if ICE detainees are receiving medication or obtaining outside medical care. According to a federal class action lawsuit filed on behalf of detainees in California, numerous ICE detainees have not been receiving medically necessary care since October 3.
The lawsuit, filed on November 12, involves the treatment of detainees at the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert. The lawsuit alleges that since Fernando Gomez Ruiz, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, arrived at the facility in mid-October, "he has been denied regular doses of insulin, leading to elevated blood sugar levels and a large, oozing ulcer on the bottom of his foot." According to the complaint, Gomez Ruiz "has also been denied proper wound care for his ulcer, which he is forced to cover with soiled bandages and bloody shoes."
Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Fernando Viera Reyes, has prostate cancer but claims he "has not seen a urologist or received the testing urgently needed to diagnose and treat his condition." Viera Reyes, according to the complaint, is "bleeding with urination" and believes "his cancer may have metastasized while he has been waiting for an appointment."
Yuri Alexander Roque Campos arrived at the California City Detention Facility in September. Since then, the lawsuit alleges, he "has been denied his heart medications for days at a time." The lawsuit says that Roque Campos' inability to obtain heart medications has resulted in several seizures but he "has yet to see a cardiologist."
Another class action lawsuit filed on October 30 regarding conditions at an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, describes similar incidents. The complaint alleges detainees "lack access to adequate medical care, even for pre-existing medical conditions." Further, ICE often does "not provide detainees with prescription medication."
One plaintiff, Claudia Carolina Pereira Guevara, who came to the Broadview facility on October 2, said she woke up one morning vomiting and "numb from the waist down." According to Guevara, despite her condition, officers at the facility "refused to take me to see a doctor or to the hospital."
These are precisely the sort of life-threatening situations that ICE warned would result from the VA's termination of the agreement.
ICE and the VA did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2023 and 2024, many Republican officials criticized the VA's agreement with ICE, falsely claiming that the Biden administration diverted resources from veterans to undocumented immigrants. In reality, ICE fully compensated the VA, and the system was implemented by the George W. Bush administration and maintained during Trump's first term.
The controversy over the arrangement between ICE and the VA began when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) introduced the No VA Resources for Illegal Aliens Act in December 2023. The bill aimed to "prohibit the Secretary of Veterans Affairs from providing health care to, or engaging in claims processing for health care for" undocumented immigrants.
Ultimately, the bill never made it out of committee in either chamber of Congress, but its sponsors took the opportunity to accuse then-President Joe Biden of prioritizing immigrants over veterans. Tubberville said Biden was "robbing veterans to pay off illegals." Bost said, "Biden's failed border policies have created a humanitarian and national security crisis. Now it appears he's taking resources away from our veterans to facilitate healthcare for illegal migrants." Democratic officials were critical of the bill and of the claims Republicans were making, calling it "intentional conflation and opportunistic messaging."
The effort also received coverage from prominent right-wing outlets like the New York Post and Fox News.
On August 12, 2024, the Daily Signal, a publication founded by the Heritage Foundation but now nominally independent, published a podcast featuring Army veteran Derick Carver. In the podcast, Carver claimed that "the VA was caught moving processors from the VA to support [ICE] processing detainee medicals." Carver, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, claimed "the care that the detainees are getting is better than a lot of what the veterans are getting."
A week later, the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a small right-wing non-profit, submitted two FOIA requests related to Carver's claims.
But after Trump was elected in November 2024, concerns about the VA's small role in ensuring ICE detainees receive medical treatment were more muted. Republicans largely stopped mentioning the issue, and Trump continued to use the VA to process reimbursement claims for ICE detainees.
Then, on September 30, 2025, CASA filed a lawsuit against the VA, claiming that it had never received a substantive response to its FOIA request. Three days later, apparently without any warning or contingency plans in place, the VA ended its agreement with ICE.
The CASA lawsuit was covered exclusively by the Daily Signal. In the article, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz told the Daily Signal that during the Biden administration, "VA was focused on all sorts of completely unnecessary activities, such as helping Veterans attempt to change their sex and processing health care claims for illegal immigrants." But, Kasperowicz emphasized, "[u]nder President Trump, the department has abandoned these radical liberal priorities."
Kasperowicz did not mention that the VA abruptly stopped processing health care claims for ICE just three days earlier, with no contingency plans or regard for the human impact of the decision.