Inside Michigan’s Largest ICE Detention Center: Solitary Confinement, Hunger Strikes and Death

BALDWIN, Mich. Most people in Flint have probably never heard of Baldwin, Michigan, a small Lake County community about two and a half hours away. But it is now at the center of a growing controversy over immigration detention.

The North Lake Processing Center is an 1,800-bed ICE detention facility that opened in June 2025. It is the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest and is operated by GEO Group, a for-profit private prison company under contract with the federal government.

One former detainee, 43-year-old Sanan Atou, says conditions inside included prolonged solitary confinement and dangerously cold temperatures. Atou came to Michigan as a child after his Chaldean Christian family fled Iraq in the early 1990s. He later lost his green card following a 2006 drug conviction, but because Iraq would not recognize him as a citizen, he spent years in legal limbo while regularly reporting to ICE.

After turning himself in last year, Atou was detained at North Lake. He says he was placed in solitary confinement after sharing food with detainees who could not afford commissary items. He described wearing multiple layers of clothing because of the cold and wrote in a journal that he feared he might “freeze to death.”

His case is raising broader questions about conditions at the facility. An MLive analysis of federal data found North Lake recorded 13 uses of solitary confinement during all of 2025, compared with 30 detainees placed in isolation in March 2026 alone. Physicians for Human Rights has accused ICE of using solitary confinement for relatively minor violations and says prolonged isolation can amount to torture.

North Lake has also faced scrutiny following the death of detainee Nenko Stanev Gantchev, a large hunger strike over conditions, congressional visits and protests outside the facility. Activist groups themselves have disagreed over tactics, with some arguing that blocking entrances can lead to canceled visitation and ultimately hurt detainees.

The controversy comes as ICE enforcement has expanded across Michigan. MLive reported roughly 4,500 people were detained by ICE in southeast Michigan from January 2025 through April 30, 2026, with nearly 2,000 arrests occurring at locations ICE has not publicly identified.

Whatever your position on immigration enforcement, the allegations coming from North Lake are serious. This is not happening at some distant border. It is happening right here in Michigan, about two and a half hours from Flint.

The Question: Should Michigan officials do more to investigate conditions inside North Lake, or should the state stay out of federal immigration enforcement?