The 911 operator couldn’t send an ambulance because it was already responding to another call from ICE’s Stewart Detention Center. Share Copy link another county?” the caller asks. “I can try,” the operator says. “I can’t make any promises, but I can try.” The call was one of dozens from the ICE detention facility seeking help with medical emergencies during the first 10 months of the second Trump administration, a sustained period of high call volume from the jail not seen since 2018. Emergency calls were made to 911 at least 15 times a month from Stewart Detention Center for six months in a row as of November 1. Like the call concerning a detainee’s head trauma from April 1, emergency dispatch records show that the ambulance service in Stewart County, Georgia, where the detention center is located, has had to seek help outside the county more than any time in at least five years — including three instances in November alone. The burden on rural Stewart County’s health care system is “unsustainable,” said Dr. Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention. “People are going to die if they don’t get me
