In his dreams, Aliaksei Shcharbachenia is on a plane with an immigration agent’s hands wrapped around his neck. When he wakes up, he’s freed from the memory of his traumatic and botched deportation attempt last month — but then he’s stuck languishing in Farmville, Virginia. 

The 35-year-old asylum-seeker from Belarus has spent nearly a year at Farmville Detention Center. There, he says, he’s experiencing medical neglect as a tumor grows on his arm. 

“It hurts when you touch it,” Shcharbachenia told The Intercept, holding his arm up on a video call to show a growth the size of an egg. He said he’d lost feeling in the fingers on his right hand, and though he requested to see a specialist in December, as of last week he hadn’t seen one nor received a diagnosis. Instead, as Shcharbachenia attested in an internal oversight complaint to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government illegally tried to deport him back to Belarus, where he fled political persecution in 2021.

Shcharbachenia is one of thousands of immigrants being held in detention facilities where the federal government or private contractors control their access to food and medical care. Soon tens of thousands more could be joining him, as the Trump administration and Congress move to rapidly expand the deportation and detention machine. And advocates warn that Farmville, purchased last year by private prison contractor CoreCivic for $67 million, has long been dogged by allegations of neglectful and unsanitary conditions.

“Dogs” live better than detainees there, Shcharbachenia told The Intercept. “I want people to know what really happens inside here.” 

The Intercept spoke to Shcharbachenia via a Russian translator arranged by an abolitionist organization, Free Them All VA, and reviewed several complaints he submitted to the DHS Office of Inspector General about the lack of medical attention for the enlarged mass on his arm and his treatment on the attempted deportation flight. When The Intercept called the inspector general’s office to discuss Shcharbachenia’s case, the number was no longer in service.

Earlier this month, Congress approved roughly $70 billion for immigration enforcement efforts. Last year, the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act allocated more than $170 billion over the next four years for immigration enforcement. And the Trump administration has been rapidly purchasing detention centers with a plan to have the capacity to detain 100,000 immigrants at once.

“What we expect is that the mass infusion of cash will only put online more detention facilities that are going to be run as private businesses, and offer the bare minimum at the cost of human life and human suffering,” said Sophia Gregg, senior immigrants’ rights attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

Gregg said that there’s no indication that the administration will manage these new facilities, many of which are converted warehouses and “temporary shelters,” any better than the current ones in operation.

“They’re using detention as a form of punishment as a way to get people to relinquish their rights to remain in this country and creating conditions that ultimately create suffering in order to induce people to elect to be removed,” she said. “And so with that being the goal of the administration to deport people as quickly as possible, they have no incentive in creating conditions that are humane.”

In fact, Shcharbachenia believes he was targeted for just that reason. In May, he was caught sharing “know your rights” information with new detainees, and guards soon placed him in solitary confinement. He was there for two weeks, Shcharbachenia recalled, and only let out of his cell with his legs and arms bound by chains.

In a statement to The Intercept, CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd said the contractor does not use solitary confinement and instead opts for “restrictive housing,” a term that describes confining a detained person in isolation from other people. He denied allegations of retaliatory treatment.

ICE did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

When Farmville Detention Center opened in 2010, its initial owners, Immigration Centers of America, argued that private management would be more humane than what the government could provide. They sold it to the community as “almost a summer camp environment,” said a spokesperson for Free Them All VA, which has been monitoring the facility for years.

Instead, advocates argue they created a hellscape for immigrants. 

In 2015, a guard pepper-sprayed a detainee while he was in full restraints and confined to a medical isolation cell, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records released under the Freedom of Information Act. In another instance from the same records, a detainee was restrained to a bed and chair for over four days. The “vendor” at the time, Immigration Centers of America, did not deny the incident but said that the action was justified. ICE responded that they would not sanction the facility for the use of force. 

The facility did receive a “one-time deduction” of its monthly invoice after detainees found “white worms” in their food, but only because Immigration Centers of America had posted a memorandum threatening anyone who “attempted to degrade the reputation of” the facility, which the government interpreted as threatening complainants.

In 2020, detainees initiated a hunger strike to demand their release as Covid swept through the facility. In August of that year, 72-year-old Canadian man James Hill died after contracting the disease inside. Instead of responding to the growing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, guards reportedly used pepper spray against detainees on hunger strike. 

Then CoreCivic bought the facility in 2025.

“Things since [the facility] moved to CoreCivic have only gotten worse,” said Gregg. “Medical services are difficult to get for individuals, if not impossible.”

Shcharbachenia, who was picked up by immigration agents at a truck stop in Virginia in August 2025, agreed with Gregg’s assessment of the care. He said the facility’s ventilation system is dirty, and it’s often freezing inside. The water is “undrinkable,” he said, and the food is disgusting and “artificial.”

Shcharbachenia, who primarily speaks Russian, said CoreCivic staff have denied access to a translator or any assistance in filing his asylum claim. He said he had received documents related to his claims while in detention, but without a translator, he was unable to do anything about it.

In February, two months after he requested urgent medical attention, Shcharbachenia said he was finally seen by an onsite doctor about his arm, but he claims that she only measured the growth on his arm and did not provide any treatment, and that he still has not seen a specialist. He said he also had a telehealth appointment, but it was for mental health care. In a letter from Shcharbachenia to the DHS Office of Inspector General in March, he detailed his medical condition and repeated requests to receive outside “specialist evaluation and imaging.”

Todd, the CoreCivic spokesperson, told The Intercept that he was unable to comment on whether Shcharbachenia had seen a specialist or received a diagnosis but said he was seen multiple times by onsite medical staff. 

“The safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority, and we take seriously our responsibility to adhere to all applicable federal detention standards at our Farmville Detention Center (FDC),” Todd wrote in a statement to The Intercept. He denied Shcharbachenia’s claims about his lack of access to a translator as well as the state of the drinking water and ventilation system, arguing that it’s the same “clean drinking water” that supplies the local community, and that the staff drink the same water and use the same ventilation systems.

On May 20, after his two weeks in isolation, ICE moved Shcharbachenia to a facility in Chantilly, Virginia, according to a separate complaint filed with the DHS Joint Intake Center. He recalled an agent asking him if he was ready to fly to Belarus.

ICE flew him to Turkey, where he begged not to be returned to Belarus as best he could in English. He said he showed officers documents he’d printed out on human rights abuses in his home country and warned that if he returned, he would likely be murdered, leaving his two daughters fatherless.

But it was to no avail. He was flown from Turkey to Azerbaijan, where was able to speak with immigration officers who understood his native Russian. He refused to board the next plane to Belarus.

Shcharbachenia said that agents from the United States and Azerbaijan began to argue, but because he did not have his passport, he was unable to leave the airport. ICE eventually escorted him back to Turkey, where he was placed in a cell in the airport.

What happened next still haunts his dreams.

“They took out of their backpacks some white plastic collars, like dog collars,” he said, referring to U.S. immigration agents. As they entered the cell, Shcharbachenia said he begged a Turkish police officer who was present for asylum. He said a U.S. immigration agent approached him from behind and hit him across the head, causing him to lose consciousness.

Shcharbachenia said he woke up on the floor with another officer “choking him so hard he couldn’t breathe.” Shcharbachenia passed out again and awoke with the plastic collars around his legs and arms, Shcharbachenia told The Intercept and wrote in three complaints filed with internal DHS oversight agencies. 

Shcharbachenia was eventually transferred back to Farmville, where he said he received no medical treatment for the injury he sustained from being hit on the back of the head. Todd, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said that the assault and head injury were not reflected in Shcharbachenia’s medical records.

As for the growing mass on his arm, Shcharbachenia said he has made multiple grievance requests for treatment. He said staff at first promised to get him an appointment within the month, but eventually, Farmville Detention Center stopped responding. 

Update: June 23, 2026, 10:53 a.m. ET
This story has been updated with an additional statement from CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd sent after publication.