Brain Science: Mental Health Displays, in ICE Custody, to Prevent Deaths?

By David Stephen 

Sedona, AZ — There is a new [October 23, 2025] story on NPR, It’s the deadliest year for people in ICE custody, stating that, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement has recorded its deadliest year since the early 2000s as agency officials push to increase the number of people in its custody.”

“According to a review of deaths by NPR, at least 20 people have died in ICE custody so far this year. The number comes as ICE is also holding nearly 60,000 people in immigration detention, the highest number in several years. Deaths reached a peak in 2025 for the first time since 32 deaths were recorded in 2004, and 20 deaths were recorded in 2005. So far this month, two more detainees have died in custody. Medical conditions surrounding deaths over the last calendar year have included tuberculosis, strokes, respiratory failure and about three possible suicides.”

“DHS Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told NPR in a statement that detainees receive medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

“With all these healthcare services and access to medical care ICE provides illegal aliens in detention, it should come as no surprise to the media that as we expand detention space, we need to hire more medical professionals,” McLaughlin said.”
“ICE is actively recruiting healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, pharmacists, and health administrators, to support the expanded detention capacity enabled by the historic funding provided under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” McLaughlin told NPR in a statement.”

What is the Mental Distortion of an ICE arrest?

The DHS is interested in preventing detainee deaths, as well as their likelihood to take ill while in custody. Although there could be several preexisting medical conditions for some before an arrest, one of the possible causative factors of a medical event during — and post — arrest is the mind, especially the devastation that happens and the distortion [of finality] that stays across the process.

What is the mind like, at the time of an ICE arrest, especially with the awareness of no return — maybe? How much of anxiety had built on the mind, before a possible arrest, and then the reality of the arrest results in devastation, confusion and total collapse?

These questions are strictly around the mental health factor of an arrest, not about their legal status, history or expectation.

Also, since the DHS is exploring medical angles for care, it is important to centralize these questions and see what to do and how to ensure that people get help — to prevent illnesses and deaths.

Already, there are possibilities of psychosomatic and psychogenic conditions, varying as the directions of mind, which in turn affects the body. However, what is to be explored here is the state of mind, especially one that may be similar to a major depression, a major anxiety or a call of the void or worse.

Mental Display

If ICE wants to reduce deaths — and the likelihood of certain illnesses — then ICE may extend a display mental health care to detainees.

The objective is to prevent deaths, and keep vulnerabilities for sicknesses low [whether some people believe it is deserved or not and to prevent a worse year ahead with deaths.]

There could be a mental health pamphlet to detainees, at minimum, showing them a concept of the mind, and what might be happening in that moment.

This pamphlet is not expected to be given away permanently, as there would be different ones for different stages and to prevent endless reprints.

There may also be notices, in some waiting areas, showing the same things depending on what stage — in the process — they might be.

This pamphlet will come in different major international languages, according to ICE arrest stats. If there are worries about contaminations or creases, it is possible to make a digital display, or use an alternative material to paper. There could be audio versions as well.

While it is true — in the instance of detainment — that some people may not be interested in looking at or reading anything, the option should at least be made available.

There are instances on the mind, where something happens and a person reaches an acceptance of fate, maybe quite fast, and while the processing of the situation would continue and might be intensely traumatic, there is a window of injection of mental health altitudes, to prevent sinking below a stage, in the mind, amid the worse.

Simply, the reality is bad, but the goal is to ensure that the destinations of mind and relays are not bouncing off too much from the negative areas to worse destinations in mind.

While there would be regular tips on cognitive reframing and restructuring, away from the distortion, displays of what is happening in the mind would be thorough, so that it does not just appear like some motivation which the mind might reject, but more like seeing parallels of the mind, and becoming aware of what is happening within to guide how to deal — helping the individuals manage the situation and preventing losses to health and life [spans].

The pamphlet will be developed with extractions from conceptual brain science. It will be simple enough but underscored by rigorous empirical advances.

What is the Human Mind?

A conceptual way to describe how the human mind works is that there are stations and there are relays. Or, that there are destinations and there’s transportation between those destinations. So, all functions are mechanized, mostly at destinations, but their usefulness is obtained when relays get there [or leave]. Functions are assumed to be in four major divisions: memory, emotions, feelings and regulation of internal senses. These divisions have several subdivisions. For example, pain is a subdivision of feeling while hurt is a subdivision of emotion. [Intelligence, thought, planning and so forth are under memory. Respiration, digestion, and others are under regulation of internal signals.]

There are relays in some areas that can affect those in other areas. For example, maybe there is a higher intensity somewhere, persistently, it may reduce the needed minimum elsewhere, and if the place is some bodily function, then it may result in some illness.

The human mind, distinct from the body, can be conceptually described as the collection of all the electrical and chemical configurators — with their interactions and attributes, in sets, in clusters of neurons — across the central and peripheral nervous systems. Simply, the human mind is the set[s] of [neuro]configurators. Interactions means the strike of electrical configurators on chemical configurators, in sets. This means that anything that can have an effect on electrical configurators or chemical configurators can influence the mind. So, functions are from interactions. While attributes qualify the functions or determine the limits or extents for those functions.

It is postulated here that electrical and chemical signals of neurons are instead configurators, who do work in sets in clusters of neurons. They are not simply for communication or transmission.

Mind Service Display for those in ICE custody

The service would show certain boxes, as stations in the mind, representing some divisions or their subdivisions. For example, the emotion of trauma, depression, anxiety, panic and so forth. There could be others too like the feeling of pain, lethargy, apathy, lack of appetite, some numbness and so forth. Then memory as racing thoughts, voices, negative imaginations, and so forth.

Then there would be relays to those areas, with attributes like splits, old/new sequences, thick sets and thin sets, intensity, volume, and so forth.

While this display will be better as a dynamic [digital] service, the necessity to ensure it gets to every person within ICE custody, could make it to be available on a physical material, and simplified with points.

For example, in the event of an ICE arrest, there could be relays, in new sequences to grief, regret, loss, state of bad luck, or worse. While it is true that some would not have this experience, their mind is still relaying somewhere, which, if it does not go to those, there could be attributes that are leading elsewhere.

Then it is possible to show what can be done to help the mind linger out of that loop, intermittently. This will ensure that there is at least fewer prioritization for those [say] negative stations and then availability of useful efficiency for others, especially of regulation of bodily states including the immune system and others.

The solution is just to give people a brief of mind, to support how they hold up, and if possible, prevent their minds for trauma permanence, as well as ensure they live, with fewer mind scars.

Possibility

The volume of people and growing number in ICE detention makes this work an emergency. It is possible to formularize this architecture now, and it is available by the first week of November, 2025, at most by November 4.

The effect of ICE detention could be different from regular incarceration, because of the suddenness, uncertainty and seeming erasure. This makes it important that approaching mind solutions can be different from traditional therapy — which would still be useful and available — to something that is ubiquitous, deeper as well as lasting.

The work can also be branched to solving AI psychosis and could have been something that the NIH Brain Initiative would have long done. If some people using AI chatbots need mental health support, then it is not unimaginable in other cases.

There is a recent [October 22, 2025] story on WIRED, People Who Say They’re Experiencing AI Psychosis Beg the FTC for Help, stating that, “But a handful of other people, who varied in age and geographical location in the US, had far more serious allegations of psychological harm. The complaints were all filed between March and August of 2025. The phenomenon known as AI psychosis, he says, is not when a large language model actually triggers symptoms but rather when it reinforces a delusion or disorganized thoughts that a person was already experiencing in some form. Chatbots can sometimes be overly sycophantic, which often keeps users happy and engaged. In extreme cases, this can end up dangerously inflating a user’s sense of grandeur or validating fantastical falsehoods.”