While reports of systemic abuse ranging from sexual assault to preventable deaths continue to surface from immigration detention centers across the country the reality of this cruelty is not always found in a smoking gun. Sometimes it is found in the casual mundane interactions of the people tasked with managing human lives.
A recently surfaced 911 call from the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin Michigan rips the mask off the dehumanizing culture inside this remote hellhole. The audio obtained through public records and featured in reporting by Michigan Public and MLive captures a law enforcement dispatcher and facility captain treating medical emergencies like a bad joke.
The call placed on December 28 2025 starts with Captain Treiber requesting the facility’s third ambulance of the day. When one detention site needs three emergency transports in hours you would expect alarm. Instead the dispatcher gives a bored “Mmhmm. Okay.” Then comes the gut punch question about the patient:
“And how old is this one?”
Not “this person.” Not “the patient.” A 58 year old Hispanic man having a cardiac emergency abnormal EKG reduced to an object. The dispatcher even cracks “Is today EKG Day?” Captain Treiber laughs along “Yes apparently we’re learning.”
This is not isolated. It is the daily soundtrack of suffering at North Lake.
Here is the exact North Lake Processing Center where this nightmare plays out every single day the sprawling 1800 bed complex run by GEO Group in tiny rural Baldwin Michigan.
The Facility: A Remote Profit Machine Reborn for Mass Deportation
North Lake Processing Center sits at 1805 West 32nd Street in Baldwin Michigan the largest ICE facility in the Midwest. It was a federal prison shut down in 2022 under Biden’s ban on private prisons for BOP. This administration and GEO reopened it as an ICE site on June 16 2025. No international border for 200 miles. Families ripped apart. Medical care hours away.
Look at the watchtower fence and entrance that now warehouse human beings for profit.
The Pattern of Pain Suffering and Preventable Death
Dozens of 911 logs obtained by Michigan Public and MLive show the facility in constant crisis once detainee numbers topped 1000 in fall 2025. Emergency calls spiked hard in October and December.
Just weeks before the “EKG Day” mockery 56 year old Nenko Gantchev a Bulgarian small business owner from Chicago who had lived in the U.S. for 30 years collapsed and died inside the facility on December 15 2025. The 911 audio from that night is chaos staff calling for a Medical Examiner the dispatcher blurting “Crap. I didn’t think of that.” ICE called it “suspected natural causes.” His family is demanding a second autopsy. Congresswomen Haley Stevens and Hillary Scholten toured the site and got zero answers.
Here is Nenko Gantchev a father husband taxpayer and small business owner who should still be alive.
Other calls reveal suicide attempts detainees refusing psychiatric meds hunger strikes and people collapsing after days without food on suicide watch. One log after another shows staff scrambling while dispatchers sound exhausted by the sheer volume.
Listen to more of these haunting 911 tapes yourself the dehumanizing tone is unmistakable:
Michigan Public – “Here’s what some of the 911 calls out of North Lake sound like” (full audio and reporting March 17 2026): https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2026-03-17/heres-what-some-of-the-911-calls-out-of-north-lake-immigration-detention-center-sound-like
Unlawful Detention plus Record Profits equals Human Warehouse
ICE’s own December 2025 data showed 90 percent of detainees at North Lake had no criminal charges just people picked up while driving or living their lives. Between August 2025 and February 2026 attorneys filed over 800 habeas corpus petitions in Michigan federal courts. Judges granted over 90 percent ruling the detentions unlawful and ordering bond hearings or release.
Yet the beds stay full and the money flows. GEO Group reported a company record 254 million dollar profit in 2025 a nearly 700 percent jump from 32 million the year before. They expect North Lake alone to generate 70 million dollars annually going forward.
Climbing Up That Hill
Local residents and allies have not stayed silent. Hundreds have rallied outside the gates with signs reading “Communities Not Cages” and “No Detention Centers in Michigan.”
Here are scenes from the protests right outside this black site.
Climbing Up That Hill
The outrage is growing with speakers calling out the cruelty to the crowd.
And banners making it crystal clear this is the beginning of something much bigger.
This Is the Business Model
The “how old is this one?” call is not a slip up. It is the system working exactly as designed treat human beings as inventory warehouse them in remote for profit hellholes rake in hundreds of millions while people die from neglect and laugh about it on 911 tapes. GEO Group turns suffering into record profits. ICE turns lives into statistics. And the federal government under this administration turns it all into mass deportation theater.
Everything here comes straight from official ICE data GEO earnings reports court filings 911 logs released to journalists and public records. The audio does not lie. The death certificates do not lie. The profit numbers do not lie.
North Lake is not an anomaly. It is the blueprint. And every single one of these calls is a scream we cannot ignore.
Sources & Further Reading
Michigan Public / MLive: “Here’s what some of the 911 calls out of North Lake sound like” (March 17, 2026) – Audio and reporting on the emergency response logs.
Plan C / We Are Plan C: “Death of a Stranger: An interview on the occasion of Nenko Gantchev’s murder at the hands of ICE” (January 2026) – Background and interview regarding the death of Nenko Gantchev.
Office of Rep. Haley Stevens: Press Release: Stevens, Scholten Tour Largest ICE Detention Center in Midwest – Official statement following the congressional visit to the North Lake Processing Center.
UpNorthLive: “Reps. Stevens, Scholten tour North Lake ICE facility after detainee death in December” – Local news coverage of the congressional tour and community response.
News From The States / Michigan Advance: “Demonstrators gather for Independence Day protest at ICE detention center in Baldwin” – Coverage of the local protests outside the facility.
