Extended ICE Detention at North Lake: the psychological impact on Michigan detainees

For many of the people detained at North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, there's no way to know how long they'll be there.

"I feel abandoned," said Kamal Tijani, who arrived in the U.S. from Nigeria in 2017. "In here, sometimes you feel down, and sometimes you feel like you know nobody cares about you… you call your friends, and they don't pick up."

Tijani has been at North Lake in Baldwin since October of 2025 — meaning he's spent nine months in ICE detention.

In Michigan, hundreds of immigrants are being held inside detention centers for over six months, and for some, like Tijani, it's been closer to a year.

Tijani first came to the United States to live with his uncle and attend college in Chicago on a student visa that was valid through 2019.

There, he met his now wife, who's originally from Georgia. They moved into an apartment in Chicago, and he worked night shifts as a maintenance technician.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him in October, officials said he had violated the terms of his student visa by staying in the United States beyond its expiration date.

Without his income, his wife lost their apartment and had to go back to stay with family in Georgia. She hasn't been able to make the trip up to Michigan.

"I just got married last year," he said. "And you want to send me back, you want to separate me from my friends, my family, my wife — for what, you know, for what reason?"

In the nine months that he's been at North Lake, he's gotten to know another of the men in his unit named Stanley Minjale.

Like Tijani, Minjale has also been at North Lake for nine months. He was working as a nursing assistant in Indiana when he was detained.

"It's quite challenging," Minjale said of being held in North Lake. "It's not easy to be here for that long period of time without freedom, just doing the same thing every day, the same routine."

Minjale immigrated to the United States from Malawi in 2021 on a student visa that was initially valid through September 2022. He later received an extension through March 2027, but that status was terminated after he failed to enroll in a university as required.

At the time of his arrest, Minjale had a work permit and was working full time.

He has a U.S. citizen son who's almost two years old. During the time he's been detained, Minjale said, he's missed several of his son's developmental milestones, including his second birthday.

The possibility of being deported back to Malawi scares him.

"I can't leave a toddler, just like that," said Minjale. "That means he's going to grow up without a father."

Tijani and Minjale are just two who have spent months together in the same unit. As of March, there were around a hundred people, including women, from all over the world who had been at North Lake for six months or longer.

The average length of stay there is six weeks, according to the latest data retrieved from Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Deportation Data Project, which hasn't been updated since March of this year.

Both Minjale and Tijani have received deportation orders, but they remain at North Lake in part because they are still fighting their cases.

The process for doing so is bureaucratic, opaque, and because of policy from the Trump administration, they are being detained indefinitely.

Tijani said many of the people around him are also depressed.

"They don't know if they are going to go out here in America, or if they are going to go back to their country."

Detainment in a former prison facility

Before it became a detention center, for years North Lake operated as a private prison.

Today not much has changed beyond the facility's name. Over half of the people held there as of March had no criminal convictions or pending charges. They're held as "immigration violators" — a civil charge.

"Legally speaking, people are being held administratively — but the experiences they're having while they're detained are very, very similar, if not identical to the experience that any incarcerated person is having," said Caitlin Patler, a sociologist at the University of California Berkeley who studies the effects of U.S. immigration policies.

Patler said unlike people who are held in jails, or prisons, for crimes they committed, many immigrants have no sense of when they will be released.

They don't know how long they'll be detained, said Patler, "and there are really very few constitutional limits on the length of detention."

Not everyone in ICE custody is treated the same. Some immigrants are subject to mandatory detention, meaning they cannot be released on bond while their immigration cases are pending. Others can request a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

A 2018 Supreme Court ruling allowed the federal government to detain certain immigrants for prolonged periods without providing automatic bond hearings. Those subject to mandatory detention generally include some newly arrived asylum seekers and immigrants with certain criminal convictions, including lawful permanent residents.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump's administration has sought to broaden the categories of immigrants subject to mandatory detention to include immigrants who have not been charged with a crime.

Federal courts across the country have largely rejected those efforts, but the issue is likely headed to the Supreme Court, which will decide whether the government can hold certain noncitizens in immigration detention for extended periods without access to a bond hearing.

Not knowing when a release will take place, coupled with an immigrant's experience inside detention, leads to poorer health outcomes for those detained, according to Dr. Altaaf Saadi, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who has been researching the health impacts of long stays inside immigration detention.

"Being isolated from their family for months, their children for months, can be psychologically devastating," said Saadi.

And then on top of that, those being held may also be facing precarious conditions inside detention centers.

Just a few months ago, at the North Lake Processing Center, hundreds of detainees staged a hunger strike over concerns about poor food and medical care and prolonged detentions.

Saadi's research has shown health outcomes worsen with each month in detention.

Immigration officials have said that detention is the best way to make sure people are actually processed for removal from the United States.

But for immigrants inside this means they are stuck, not knowing when they will see their families and friends again.

"I'm depressed when I think about my family out there. I'm so depressed most of the time, so I always try my best not to think about it, just to be strong," said Minjale. "[To] read a lot of books and to interact with these people, like playing cards, playing chess, playing checkers… to buy time. But it's not easy. It's very hard."

Both Minjale and Tijani have appealed their deportation orders, but they don't know when the immigration court will make a final decision on their case. Until then, they remain at the North Lake Processing Center.

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