THE number of people in United States immigration detention tops 70,000 for the first time, it was reported today.

Damning federal data reveals that as of mid-January some 7,252 have been in detention for at least six months and 79 for more than two years.

Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump’s second term, partly because of a new policy prohibiting immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases wind through backlogged courts.

The soaring detention figures come despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) cannot hold immigrants indefinitely, saying six months was a reasonable cap.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond when asked why more people are being held longer than six months.

Meanwhile, detainees have reported inhumane conditions in the centres.

Felipe Hernandez spent 45 days at Alligator Alcatraz, an immigration holding centre in Florida where detainees have reported worms in their food, toilets that don’t flush and overflowing sewage.

He and others also reported swarms of insects in the centre.

Now at Fort Bliss Texas, Mr Hernandez and many others seem prepared to give up any efforts to stay in the US.

“I came to this country thinking they would help me, and I’ve been detained for six months without having committed a crime,” he said in a phone interview from Fort Bliss.

“It has been too long. I am desperate.”

The first three detainees that attorney Ana Alicia Huerta met on her monthly trip to an Ice detention centre in McFarland, California, to offer free legal advice in January said they signed a form agreeing to leave the US but were still waiting.

“All are telling me: ‘I don’t understand why I’m here. I’m ready to be deported’,” said Ms Huerta, a senior attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “That’s an experience that I’ve never had before.”

“The conditions are so poor and so bad that people say, ‘I’m going to give up’,” said Sui Cheng, executive director at Americans for Immigrant Justice.

Among those detained for months are people who have won protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, who cannot be deported to their home country but may be sent elsewhere.

A Mexican man detained in October 2024 in Florida was held for a year even though he won a protection under the United Nations torture convention in March 2025 — underlining the apparent disregard the Trump administration shows for legal restrictions on its immigration policies.