ATLANTA—There are currently 60,000-70,000 detainees in ICE custody in the U.S. Tracreports.org states that as of February 7, the number was 68,289. Black migrants make up 5.4% to 6% of undocumented immigrants. Americanimmigrationcouncil.org, citing the 2022 report “Uncovering The Truth:
Violence and Abuse Against Black Migrants in Immigration Detention,” states that “Black immigrants in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disproportionately face abuse while in detention.”
When Mildred Pierre moved from Miami to Atlanta six years ago, she searched for a barber for her son. She came across Rodney Taylor on social media. The two started dating a year later. She described Mr. Taylor as a kind giver who often gave free haircuts to the community and was a finalist for a “community champion” award.
He and Ms. Pierre got engaged in early January 2025. Just 10 days later, their lives changed forever. On an early January morning, they were on their way to drop off two of their daughters at school when she says several unmarked vehicles boxed them in.
Ms. Pierre, who was in the driver’s seat, described the situation as “like a scene from a movie.”
“I was like, ‘What is going on?’ They’re screaming Rodney’s name. ‘Rodney Taylor, get out the car!’ They got their guns in their hand, their guns on their waist, all of them wearing bulletproof vests. Nobody is wearing any identification,” she said to The Final Call.
“They politely open the door and pull Rodney out and proceed to handcuff him, and the kids are crying. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on? Who are you people? And we hear: ICE,” she added.
At the time, she did not know what “ICE” was. She said one of the officers told her to “Google it.” Numb from the event, she went about the rest of that day, January 15, 2025, as if nothing had happened.
“I was too shocked from the whole thing. Like, how did this happen and why? It just didn’t make any sense. So I went to work, dropped off the kids to school and I waited to hear from him, and he did end up calling me, and he told me where they took him, Atlanta ICE Field Office,” she said.
Rodney Taylor, a double amputee from Liberia and a father of seven, has been in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than a year. Before his detainment, he worked as a successful barber in Gwinnett County in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Now, he’s a resident of Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
Mr. Taylor was in the process of obtaining citizenship when he was detained. His younger brother, Michael Stewart, who is a U.S. citizen, recalled feeling a mixture of confusion and defeat over the incident. “He was going through this process and so close to getting his citizenship and doing everything right.
And when this happened, it was just a deep blow, and everybody was in shock that something like this can happen when you’re in the final steps of getting your citizenship,” he said to The Final Call.
Mr. Taylor’s mother brought him to the U.S. when he was just two years old. He entered on a medical visa and has had 16 different operations. When he was 16, police accused him of breaking into a neighbor’s window and stealing a stereo, a crime he initially said he did not commit.
At the time, he had wooden prosthetic legs. Authorities told him to plead guilty or face years in prison, according to Ms. Pierre. He pleaded guilty. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole pardoned him in 2010.
Ms. Pierre is still asking questions about why Mr. Taylor is detained, years after his pardon. Initially, she said ICE agents cited an order of removal from when Mr. Taylor was a child as the reason for his arrest, an order that was taken back the same year it was given.
Mr. Taylor’s legal team filed a habeas corpus in federal court and is waiting for a judge to rule. Ms. Pierre said a date for when that will happen is still up in the air, but that Mr. Taylor has already had several court hearings and is in the appeals process.
Alleged mistreatment in custody
As a disabled, double amputee with various medical conditions, Mr. Taylor requires medication and constant support for his high-tech electronic prosthetics. His prosthetics require maintenance at least every three months, including changing out the liners and socks that protect his skin from direct contact with the prosthetic’s plastic.
“They have not been providing that for him. Rodney has the same liners from 2024,” Ms. Pierre alleges. “They have not provided him adequate medical support for his prosthetics. As a result, he has new medical diagnoses that he didn’t have prior to detention that is a direct result of his prosthetics.”
Additional diagnoses include bone spurs in his back, neuropathy and high blood pressure.
Without appropriate liners, Mr. Taylor finds it difficult to walk, as the prosthetics causes his skin to chafe and bruise, creating open, bleeding wounds and boils. Ms. Pierre added that previously, someone at the facility would get his food, but that recently changed.
Instead, Mr. Taylor has been relying on a commissary to eat, which is expensive for his family. “We’re not in a financial position to pay for him to eat three times a day,” Ms. Pierre said.
She also commented on the living conditions at Stewart Detention Center, including showers full of mold, human feces and bodily fluids that Mr. Taylor has to crawl through on hands and knees when he removes his prosthetics to shower, the toilet in his room running 24/7 and spilling over the toilet bowl, causing flooding in the room, and a contaminated water supply.
The alleged deplorable conditions at Stewart Detention Center are not an anomaly for ICE detention centers. Through an investigation into human rights abuses in immigration detention, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) received or identified more than 1,000 credible reports of abuse since Jan. 20, 2025, according to a report published in late January 2026.
The 1,000-plus credible reports include reports of family separation, including mothers separated from their breastfeeding infants; medical neglect that has led to, in some cases, life-threatening injuries and complications; mistreatment of pregnant women;
Mistreatment of children; physical and sexual abuse; denial of adequate food or water, including cases that led to malnutrition and dehydration; denial of access to attorneys, including cases where detainees are told they are not allowed to meet with their attorneys; overcrowding and unsanitary conditions; exposure to extreme temperatures and imposed sleep deprivation.
Between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 12, 2026, ICE confirmed 36 deaths in custody, according to the report. More than half of the 1,000-plus reports came from four states: Texas (179), Florida (168), California (146) and Georgia (137).
“We were working with Jon Ossoff’s office. They’re fully aware of Rodney’s condition,” Ms. Pierre said. “They were actually trying to visit him, but the detainment center blocked them. ICE blocked any congressional visits.”
On Feb. 17, 21 members of Congress penned a letter to recently fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, requesting the release of Mr. Taylor due to his deteriorating health.
“We are deeply concerned about Mr. Taylor’s treatment in detention, including the denial of medical care and now the denial of accommodations to ensure he is fed. We urge you to immediately give full and fair consideration to his request to be released from detention and his contention that he is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community,” they wrote.
After mounting criticism and scrutiny over the months-long immigration crackdown in the country, President Donald Trump fired Secretary Noem on March 5. In a hearing the day before, U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), one of the letter’s signers, confronted Secretary Noem on Mr. Taylor’s case.
“Secretary Noem, can you honestly tell Rodney’s wife and family and the American people that are watching that these cruel and unusual conditions are acceptable under your watch?” Rep. McBath questioned. “We wrote to you about Rodney’s treatment more than two weeks ago.”
“We deserve an answer, and Rodney’s family definitely deserves an answer, because this is inhumane treatment,” she said.
Impact on family
In his year in ICE detention, Mr. Taylor has missed the first day of school for his children, including the first day of kindergarten, performances and softball games. He has missed spending holidays and anniversaries with his family.
“The kids in particular, they view Rodney as the fun parent, the cool parent. Whenever they can’t get what they want from me, of course, they go to him,” Ms. Pierre said. “They miss the parent that is the voice of reason, allowing them to be the kid that they want without restraint.”
“Mentally, it’s been hard because they lean on him for emotional and mental support. He’s my daughter’s best friend. They talk about everything,” she added. With Mr. Taylor’s absence, Ms. Pierre’s son now feels obligated to be the man of the house. “He’s only 16,” she said. “No kid should have to worry about that.”
During visits, Mr. Taylor sees his family behind Plexiglas. Ms. Pierre recalled that during one visit, their four-year-old daughter tried to figure out why she could not touch him and why he was not coming with them when they were leaving.
“She threw a whole fit. She threw herself on the nasty floor, kicking and crying. We all cried. Kids have a way of being honest with their emotions. We felt the same way she felt; we just couldn’t throw ourselves on the floor and roll like she did,” Ms. Pierre said.
Her daughter is now five years old and still asking questions. “Just the other day she asked me, ‘Mommy, when Daddy’s coming home?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Mommy, can you text daddy for him to call?’ ‘No, we can’t do that,’” Ms. Pierre recalled. “How do you explain that to a five-year-old?”
She said the family has been surviving off donations for Mr. Taylor’s legal team, his commissary for him to eat, for him to use the telephone and even to rent a car to travel three hours south of metropolitan Atlanta to visit him. She expressed that even when paying for Mr. Taylor to eat and make phone calls, he often shares with other detainees.
“He lets other detainees use his card to make phone calls. He also shares his commissary with new detainees that don’t have access to get meals,” she said.
Mr. Stewart also commented on his brother’s desire to always help. “In the midst of his struggles he had growing up and just his struggles in life, for him to have that heart of gold to always want to give back and always want to take care of total strangers was something that I always looked up to,” he said.
A GoFundMe page has been helping the family stay afloat. Since his detention, family and advocates have been calling for people to sign a change.org petition demanding Mr. Taylor’s release. The petition has more than 7,000 signatures, with a goal of 10,000.
“The family’s been impacted every single day, every second of the day that we cannot willingly reach out to our brother, or we can’t freely go and see him,” Mr. Stewart said.
He described his brother’s detention as a constant source of frustration. “Throughout the year that he’s been in there, it’s been tough, especially as a family,” he said. “The one thing that we can ask anybody who hears his story is just to share his story.”
Family and organizers held an emergency webinar via Zoom on March 13, two days after learning that ICE issued Mr. Taylor travel documents for Liberia. They fear Mr. Taylor could be deported to Liberia at any time. The organizers played a recorded audio message from Mr. Taylor during the webinar.
Mr. Taylor thanked all who are advocating his release. “Just to have all these people fighting for me is a blessing,” he said. He prayed that his case sets a precedent for others who are detained, so the facility “would know that they can’t treat people any type of way, because what they’re doing is wrong. It’s dead wrong. It’s inhumane.”
“We are not cattle. We are human beings, and everybody deserves rights,” Mr. Taylor added. “I just ask to be treated fairly.”