Investigate ICE's Missing Medical Payments and Detainee Deaths

Congress needs to investigate where the money for ICE detainee medical care is going and hold this administration accountable for the resulting deaths. ICE called the collapse of its medical payment system an "absolute emergency" back in November 2025. Nearly a year later, providers still haven't been paid a dime, detainees are dying at nearly four times the rate of the Biden administration, and no one in Congress seems to be demanding answers. The numbers here are staggering. The VA processed $246 million in ICE medical claims in 2024 alone. ICE then paid Acentra Health $36 million to build a replacement claims system — and Acentra has processed zero claims. Now they claim they were never supposed to process claims at all. UCHealth in Colorado is sitting on over $4 million in unpaid bills. A nonprofit ambulance service in Pennsylvania has responded to 43 calls at an ICE facility and received nothing. Francisco Gaspar-Andrés visited the medical unit nine times before dying of liver failure in December 2025 — a death that may have been preventable. This is a basic oversight function: find out where hundreds of millions of dollars went, why Acentra was paid $36 million to deliver nothing, and what it will take to guarantee that anyone held in federal custody receives adequate medical care. People are dying in government custody. That demands a congressional investigation now.