ABC News98%
Former ICE detainee says detention center conditions are like a ‘dungeon’ 82%
4/4/2026, 1:45:08 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Anecdotal, and Availability Heuristic, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 33% saturation with 257 hits. Analysis detected 1,270 faulty-reasoning hits from 778 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 74.4% and a BS Rank of 82% (3,127 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 81.40% of the video peer group.
A few weeks ago we reported on the case of Lac Courteille, a 33-year-old
Palestinian woman who spent an entire year in ICE detention. She was finally freed in mid-March after a judge ordered her release.
Lac Courteille was detained last year during a meeting with ICE officers and immediately sent to Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas.
Her arrest was linked in part to her participation in pro-Palestinian protests outside of Columbia University in 2024.
An immigration judge had ordered her release three times, but the Trump administration challenged the first two rulings.
She was finally released on bond and is now using her voice to reveal the dire conditions she says detainees have to endure inside this detention center.
Lac Courteille is joining us in studio tonight.
Thank you so much for being here, especially having just been released just a few weeks ago.
Really appreciate you coming in.
Thank you for having me. Absolutely.
How are you doing? How is your family doing?
That's a rough question. I don't know how to answer it.
I mean I'm blessed, I'm grateful, of course. But this is only the first step.
I'm still fighting my case. I'm still fighting for my freedom.
I'm still fighting for my freedom. I'm still subjected to be deported to Israel.
So I was only released on a bond. That's all.
My family, they're they're grateful that
I'm among them again like I'm not in jail, but also I have the bigger side of the family. They're still in Gaza, trapped in Gaza.
I lost 200 family members to the genocide, the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It's unimaginable loss. 200 family members.
And then the family that you have that's in Gaza is just barely surviving.
>> Yes.
You spent a year at this detention center.
What was that experience like?
What were the conditions like in there?
I would use the word jail, dungeon.
It's it's literally a jail system. It's not like detention center is a very nice word to to say.
The conditions are really bad. The food is horrible.
Us detainees, we used to call it dogs food and some of the detainees they they were like I don't even give this food to my dogs.
We weren't allowed fruits or vegetables.
The water wasn't clean.
Often we would be directed to drink from a sink that is connected to a toilet seat. Sometimes the water would have things swimming in it.
We would sleep on a paper thin mattress, very overcrowded.
I slept on the floor for 3 months straight.
Cockroaches, all these bugs will be walking on me.
Um
I would have we would have pregnant ladies with us.
Also experiencing the same conditions.
Sometimes like they would be in real pain and nobody will come to see them.
There are children, literally children, kids.
It seems like such a difficult way to live.
I'm sure you heard many horrifying stories while you were there.
Can you walk us through just a regular day there?
Walk us through just the when you would wake up in the morning for instance.
What were some of the things that everyone was supposed to do?
We barely sleep.
That's one because of the noise of the walkie-talkie for the guards and the movements that transferring people.
And this movement will happen during the night most of the time.
So you barely sleep.
You would be awakened on like chow, the word chow.
They use the word chow to for food for like to call for food.
They would scream yell at us and you have only like 2 minutes to wake up and go to the dining early area.
If you didn't wake up and go then no food for you.
And I would imagine that the medical the medical care was poor.
You mentioned there were some pregnant women that were there and needed care.
We understand that you also had a medical episode while you were there in detention with a seizure.
But let's go back to the day of your detention.
The government accused you of overstaying your visa and is questioning payments.
You sent to your family in the Middle East.
They are also accusing you of partaking in what they call pro-Hamas protests.
What is your response to that?
Well, the government actually like they dropped all these charges and because
there was no evidence of what they accused me of.
Basically all this was turned out to be just propaganda and false.
They had no evidence to provide.
I was simply I'm a
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