EXCLUSIVE: ICE Detainees Strain Short-Staffed FCI Berlin and Arrive With Incomplete Criminal Records, DOJ Inspector General Finds; BOP Tells TDFP It Will Act
ICE detainees are straining a short-staffed federal prison in northern New Hampshire, and prison employees say the immigration agency is sending them with incomplete or inaccurate criminal histories, including missing information on prior incarcerations and gang affiliations, according to a Justice Department Inspector General inspection report published Thursday.
The report, an unannounced inspection of Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Berlin posted Oct. 15 as report 27-002, found the prison operating at about 80 percent of its authorized staffing despite roughly $2.4 million in retention bonuses, contraband "present and highly visible" in housing units while the prison's contraband-screening equipment sat broken, and major building systems nearing the end of their lifespan, with more than $17 million in repairs requested from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The OIG made eight recommendations. The BOP concurred with all of them.
In a statement to The Digital Free Press on Thursday, the BOP's Office of Public Affairs said FCI Berlin "has already begun taking steps to address the issues identified in the report." ICE and the DOJ Office of Public Affairs did not respond to TDFP's request for comment by deadline.
FCI BERLIN: A NEW MISSION FOR A PRISON ALREADY SHORT ON STAFF
FCI Berlin began housing ICE detainees in March 2025 under an interagency agreement between the BOP and ICE that lists eight BOP institutions that may hold people in ICE custody. OIG inspectors arrived unannounced on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, and stayed through Jan. 15.
On the day they arrived, the prison held 600 BOP inmates in its medium-security facility, 52 BOP inmates in its camp and 194 male ICE detainees, a total of 846 people, about 51 percent of the institution's physical capacity of 1,660. The turnover is heavy: BOP records show FCI Berlin completed 846 intakes of ICE detainees between March and the end of September 2025, and the prison's clinical director told inspectors it was receiving 30 to 50 new detainees a week in November 2025.
The prison was staffed at 80 percent of its authorized positions, 222 of 276, with 54 vacancies ranging from physician to correctional officer, even after about $2.4 million in retention bonuses paid to FCI Berlin employees between January 2025 and January 2026. The institution's sole dentist position had been vacant for more than a year; a temporary dentist was generally on site only about three days a month. Inspectors found no full-time dentist, phlebotomist or BOP psychologist on site.
A BOP official responsible for placing inmates and detainees told the OIG the bureau had no plans to increase the number of either at FCI Berlin, but acknowledged that ICE removal efforts drove the population in part and that the detainee headcount has swung between about 120 and 240. The housing units set aside for ICE detainees can hold more than 500.
"At the time of our inspection, we found that FCI Berlin was largely able to meet operational needs at its current custody population but its ability to do so would be at risk if this population, including ICE detainees, were to increase," the report says.
"INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE" RECORDS FROM ICE
The finding most likely to draw attention in Washington concerns the paperwork that arrives with each detainee. "According to institution employees, the chief safety and security concern pertaining to the ICE detainee population stemmed from incomplete or inaccurate criminal history documentation, such as information on prior incarcerations or gang affiliations, that was provided for detainees assigned to FCI Berlin," the report says.
Because the records could not be relied on, BOP employees ran their own additional security screenings on arriving detainees to decide where to house them and whom to keep apart, and conducted their own comprehensive medical intake examinations because medical histories were also incomplete or inaccurate, the OIG found. Prison leadership described both processes as more time-consuming and burdensome for the detainee population than for BOP inmates.
The inspection also found a gap specific to detainees in how sexual-misconduct complaints are handled. An internal BOP audit found FCI Berlin was not keeping accurate and complete records of investigations into allegations made by ICE detainees, and the OIG identified possible confusion about the sexual-abuse reporting information displayed in detainee housing units. The prison had tracked only allegations it judged worth a full investigation, rather than all of them, and told the OIG it changed that practice in March 2026. One of the eight recommendations asks the BOP to work out with ICE how detainees are told to report sexual misconduct.
CONTRABAND "PRESENT AND HIGHLY VISIBLE"
In the year before the inspection, FCI Berlin employees stopped 74 contraband smuggling attempts, nearly all of them drugs hidden in inmate mail, including two cases involving ICE detainees. Several other incidents in which employees were exposed to illicit drugs required immediate medical attention; one employee was treated with naloxone for opioid overexposure.
Inside the medium-security facility, inspectors found contraband in BOP inmate cells that pointed to lapses in enforcement: BOP-issued shaving razors well beyond authorized quantities, some altered so that loose blades were scattered in cells; gambling flyers, betting slips and laminated gambling materials in two housing units; stockpiles of commissary items and dining-hall food that can be used as currency or to make alcohol; and sexually explicit photographs displayed in eight cells and above a laundry-room workstation.
The prison's pallet X-ray machine, used to screen large food and commissary deliveries, had been inoperable for almost three years. The acting warden told the OIG he believed repairing or replacing it would lead to significantly fewer incidences of contraband. Random pat searches of employees, which BOP policy requires for at least 30 employees a month across morning, daytime and overnight shifts, happened frequently on the morning shift, sporadically during the day and not at all on evening shifts, and fell short of 30 in two of the 12 months reviewed.
MISSED ROUNDS AND LOST FOOTAGE
Reviewing 128 hours of surveillance footage from three days before the inspection, the OIG found correctional officers conducted no rounds in two general population housing units during overnight periods, including one unit housing ICE detainees, and found multiple instances in which officers went three hours or more overnight without a round. The report notes the OIG's earlier finding that failures to complete monitoring rounds contributed to 86 inmate deaths between 2014 and 2021, including that of Jeffrey Epstein.
FCI Berlin had recently upgraded its camera system to higher-quality digital video, but employees said the larger files overwhelmed the prison's existing recording equipment and reduced how long footage was kept, a problem the OIG said can hamper investigations of sexual assaults, civil rights violations and contraband.
$17 MILLION IN REPAIRS AND EIGHT RECOMMENDATIONS
The prison's major infrastructure systems were working but approaching the end of their projected lifespan, and FCI Berlin had asked the BOP for more than $17 million to make major updates or repairs, the report says. Inmate programming was a strength, the OIG found, but understaffing limited how much of it the prison could offer.
The eight recommendations cover documenting and scheduling medical sick-call requests, securing dangerous medical equipment and supervising inmate workers in the health unit, rewriting post orders so that "random and irregular rounds" in all general population units, including ICE detainee units, are conducted and reviewed by supervisors, clarifying detainee sexual-misconduct reporting procedures with ICE, improving contraband detection and removal, and carrying out employee pat searches on every shift as policy requires. In its written response, included in the report, the BOP concurred with all eight.
WHAT THE AGENCIES SAID
TDFP asked ICE whether it has corrected the criminal-history documentation it sends with detainees, and asked the BOP whether it plans to add detainees at FCI Berlin given the OIG's capacity warning and whether the contraband equipment has been fixed. The BOP's full response, from Emery Nelson of its Office of Public Affairs:
"For safety and security reasons, we do not comment on internal security practices. However, we can provide you with the following response to your inquiry. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) appreciates the work of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) in this important area. We agree with the OIG's recommendations, and FCI Berlin has already begun taking steps to address the issues identified in the report and is fully committed to implementing all of the OIG's recommendations. We have no additional information to provide beyond this and our responses in the OIG report."
ICE and the DOJ Office of Public Affairs did not respond to TDFP's request for comment by deadline. This story will be updated if they do.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, "Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Federal Correctional Institution Berlin," Report 27-002 (October 2026, posted Oct. 15, 2026), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/27-002.pdf; statement from the BOP Office of Public Affairs to TDFP (Oct. 15, 2026).
Images: Cover and in-post photos were taken inside FCI Berlin by DOJ OIG inspectors in January 2026 and published in the report. Photo: DOJ OIG.
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