ICE and Measles

It seems that measles has broken out in ICE detention centers. Also, ICE has stopped paying for detainee health care. Do the math.

Measles in the US in 2026

Now that RFKJr is making war on public health in general and vaccination in general, perhaps we should check in on the data to see the fruits of his labor.

The data journalists at CNN have been collecting data from (what’s left of) the CDC, as well as from Johns Hopkins and the Center for Outbreak Innovation. At least we still mostly have these data, and can see what’s going on (though I expect that possibly the CDC data reporting may be shut down based on what’s happening, q.v.).

They’ve made a little interactive tool that shows you the cumulative cases of measles in the US, as of the current date. ^[1] Here’s what it’s showing as of today, 2026-Feb-01:

• The horizontal axis is time within a given year.
• The vertical axis is the total number of measles cases seen so far that year.
• The curves shown are for 2023, 2024, 2025, and now the first month of 2026.

The obvious and disturbing conclusion is that 2023 and 2024 were sort of ok, 2025 was a major disaster of public health, and 2026 is shaping up to be far, far worse. We remind everyone that measles is the most contagious disease known to humanity, with $R_0 \sim$ 12-18. That means ever infected person, absent vaccinations and quarantines, will infect 12-18 others. As we’ve analyzed before on this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), that means to stop an outbreak you need vaccination rates greater than $1 - 1/R_0$, or about 91% – 94% of the population. That’s why, Chez Weekend, we got MMR boosters last spring: idiots are no longer getting vaccinated and thus posing a risk to the rest of us.

This coming year will be a very difficult one, from the perspective of avoiding the avoidable illnesses.

You can see the pattern of childhood vaccinations at kindergarten age in this map, accompanying the CNN measles reporting tool.

We’re pretty happy about the state of New England, where Château Weekend finds itself. (Ok, New Hampshire, as always, is a conservative laggard. Vermont is a bit more puzzling.) But many other states, in the Deep South and the Midwest, seem to be playing roulette with their children’s health by not getting measles vaccinations.

Honestly, I just don’t understand why that’s not grounds for a charge of child abuse.

ICE Captivity: Maggot-Infested Food, Dangerously Poor Sanitation, No Medical Care, Beatings, and Now… Measles

We’ve known from multiple reports that ICE detention is downright barbaric, more the creation of sadistic thugs than of a civilized nation. All the reports say people sleep on concrete floors without blankets, the food is infested with maggots, the sanitation facilities have far too few showers & toilets, so the result is stink and disease.

It also appears that this is accompanied by beatings. A recent report out of Minneapolis ^[2] told of a man taken into ICE custody, and then taken by ICE to a hospital 4 hours later. This is what the Associated Press got out of interviews with a doctor and 5 nurses:

• The patient was taken into custody with a self-issued warrant from ICE, not a judge. So the detention is legally questionable from the get-go.
• He had a black eye, deeply swollen face, bleeding, and was delirious to the point of having difficulty talking.
• Imaging showed that his skull was fractured in 8 places, and that he had 5 brain areas with life-threatening hemorrhages.

Upon being asked, ICE officers said he was handcuffed and “purposefully ran head-first into a brick wall”. Now, it is physically impossible to get multiple skull fractures on both the left and right side from running head-first into a brick wall with ones hands cuffed behind one’s back. The first time would have incapacitated him, let alone left him in a position to do so multiple times and cause multiple hemorrhages.

“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about,” said one of the nurses, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall.”

This man was, in the opinion of the attending doctors and nurses, clearly tortured.

After all, which is the more likely scenario:

• An acrobatically talented and physically durable prisoner ran into a brick wall multiple times, giving himself multiple life-threatening injuries, or
• ICE just beat him nearly to death, got scared, took him to a hospital, and then lied about it?

Hint: Any scenario which involves ICE lying is probably the more likely scenario.

This is the eternal response of abusers everywhere: blame the victim. He somehow beat himself almost to death, while ICE officers were watching helplessly.

Isn’t that bad enough? Clearly not, in this worst of all possible worlds.

Two different sources report ^{[3] [4]}, and DHS confirms, that measles has broken out in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center (ICE detention), in Texas. When you’re being fed food infested with parasites, have less sanitation than livestock in a crowded barn, sleep on cold concrete, and are fsubject to beatings, measles will make everything much, much worse.

Again, as the most contagious disease known to humanity, we expect this to rip through the ICE detention center and likely kill many. Do you want to take bets on what the MMR vaccination rate is among ICE detainees? (Or among ICE guards, for that matter?)

We note that this center detains children, currently over 400 of the 1200 detainees.

And it’s not just the Texas facility. An independent report documents another measles outbreak in Florence, Arizona. ^[5]

Far from quarantining the outbreak to stop the spread, ICE officials were shipping detainees on buses to Newark and Philadelphia, almost ensuring the spread of measles to those facilities.

ICE officials, of course, admit nothing. However, they did say something very peculiar: instead of releasing detainees to a local church which has customarily taken care of newly released persons, they were being released to a bus depot, apparently so they could go infect someone elsewhere (emphasis added):

Pastor Hector Ramirez, of Iglesia Cristiana el Buen Pastor in Mesa, said his church has been receiving immigrants released from Florence and Eloy detention centers since 2018.…

But later, Ramirez got an email saying 11 migrants would instead be released to the Phoenix bus depot, rather than his church, to ensure his staff wouldn’t risk exposure to measles.

“He told me, ‘Knowing that your volunteers are (older) adults and not wanting to expose them, we’re not going to bring them to your church,’” he said.

So they know there’s exposure risk, and they’re just encouraging people to get on buses instead of going to the local group that normally takes care of new releases? Just… cause disease elsewhere?!

Now, how could ICE make this situation worse?

Well, how about refusing to pay for medical services for detainees? A report from The New Republic ^[6] says ICE has accrued hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid medical bills for healthcare provided to detainees.
Furthermore, ICE is not only refusing to pay for medical care, but outright refusing to allow medical care in the first place:

To be clear, ICE is not simply not paying for detainees’ medical treatment: Multiple reports suggest they are not providing it at all, even though federal law requires them to do so. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff released a report in October documenting at least “85 credible reports of medical neglect” at U.S. detention centers.

As a result, people in detention are dying, whether of disease, beatings, or outright murder by ICE agents:

Seven immigrants died in ICE custody in December, making it the deadliest month since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And 2025 was the deadliest year for immigrants in detention since 2004.

So far, January is on track to be even worse: At least six people have already died in ICE custody this year, including one man who reportedly was choked to death by an ICE agent.

ICE is, however, not without a response. It’s an evil response, but still a response, as pointed out by epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs:

Note the change in future direction of ICE Health Services: from “direct patient care” to “assessing alien’s [sic] fitness to travel as they prepare for deportation”. As proof, the original ICE Health Services statement is archived here, while the new one is here. Read them and snapshot them now, before ICE deletes the evidence, as is the custom of their tribe.

This amounts to making sure people can survive a deportation flight, so they will just die somewhere else. Jacobs’s comparison to Mengele is not far off.

The Weekend Conclusion

RFKJr is determined, by his vaccine policies, to shoot himself in the foot with a giant footgun. The nature of public health being public, this means he will shoot your foot also. ICE is just penning people up in horrific conditions, beating them, murdering some of them, denying health care, and hoping an institutional pandemic will commit mass murder for them.

Republicans: Are you comfortable with that? Because you voted for that, as was clearly stated in the campaign before the election last year.

In the US, 1/3 voted against this, 1/3 voted for it, and 1/3 couldn’t be bothered to vote. I’m not sure which of the last 2 categories bothers me more.

(Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.)

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Notes & References

1: AL Matthews, et al., “Tracking measles cases in the United States”, CNN, 2026-Jan-08.

Data used here is the update as of 2026-Feb-01. ↩

2: M Biesecker, et al., “Takeaways from AP report on ICE claims that immigrant shattered his skull running into wall”, AP News, 2026-Jan-31. ↩

3: J Warner, “Measles outbreak at Texas immigration detention facility confirmed by DHS officials”, News 4 San Antonio, 2026-Feb-01. ↩

4: S Koithan, “Source: Measles outbreak reported at ICE’s Dilley family detention facility”, San Antonio Current, 2026-Feb-01. ↩

5: E Bregel, “Measles outbreak at ICE detention centers in Arizona prompts quarantine”, Tucson.com, 2026-Feb-01. ↩

6: E Olmsted, “ICE Has Cut Its Detainees Off From Medical Care”, The New Republic, 20226-Jan-20. ↩