Investigating ICE's Mass Detention System: A Conversation with Doug MacMillan of The Washington Post

Few reporters have done more to expose what’s happening inside America’s sprawling immigrant detention system than Doug MacMillan. Over the past year, his investigations at The Washington Post have broken open story after story that most of us would never otherwise see: the mysterious death of Geraldo Lunas Campos at Camp East Montana, the Trump administration’s plan to convert massive warehouses across 23 American towns into facilities holding up to 80,000 people, and the private prison companies profiting from human confinement on an unprecedented scale.

Doug’s reporting matters because it refuses to let this system operate in the shadows. While ICE detention has expanded to record levels—now holding more than 70,000 people—the conditions inside these facilities, the corporate profits driving expansion, and the deaths occurring behind walls have largely escaped sustained public attention. Doug has made it his mission to change that.

I’m thrilled to host Doug for a virtual conversation on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, at 1:00 PM Eastern. We’ll dig into three critical areas of his recent reporting:

Deaths in detention. The death of Geraldo Lunas Campos at Camp East Montana in early January sparked questions that ICE has been slow to answer. A fellow detainee said he witnessed Lunas Campos being choked to death by guards; ICE said “staff observed him in distress.” The El Paso County Medical Examiner indicated the office was likely to classify the death as a homicide, pending toxicology results—then did, in fact, rule it a homicide. Doug will walk us through what he’s learned about this case and what deaths in detention reveal about conditions for the 70,000 people currently locked up.

The warehouse expansion. ICE is moving fast to convert industrial warehouses into detention centers—purchases already include a $102 million facility in Washington County, Maryland, an $84 million warehouse in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and a $70 million building in Surprise, Arizona. Some of these facilities could hold as many as 8,000 people. Doug will share the latest on where this expansion is happening, how communities are pushing back, and whether these massive facilities can meet even basic detention standards.

The corporate players. Behind every detained person is a budget line, a contract, and often a private company. Doug’s reporting has traced the financial incentives that keep this system growing—from GEO Group’s renewed prominence under Trump to the local governments and private equity firms profiting from confinement. We’ll talk about who benefits from mass detention and how.

This will be a substantive conversation with plenty of time for Q&A. Whether you’re a journalist, researcher, attorney, organizer, or someone trying to make sense of what’s happening, you’re welcome to join us.

Event Details

• Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2026

• Time: 1:00 PM Eastern

• Format: Virtual (Zoom)

• Registration: Click here to register on Zoom.

• Recording: The event will be recorded and rebroadcast as a podcast post here on Substack.

About Doug MacMillan

Doug MacMillan is a business investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2019 after covering technology companies from the San Francisco bureaus of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News for nearly 10 years. His reporting has uncovered abuses by corporate actors of many stripes, including a privacy coverup by top executives at Google, lapses in safety oversight by Boeing’s board of directors and gaps in the oversight of the largest lifeguard training program in the U.S. Most recently, his reporting has exposed failures at the privately-run ICE detention centers where the Trump administration is holding record numbers of immigrant detainees.

Connect with Doug online:

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/dmac1

• Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/douglas-macmillan/

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