Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly suspended a rule last summer at a large private lockup in Adelanto, Calif., that requires immigrant detainees receive a comprehensive health assessment within two weeks of arrival, according to a previously undisclosed ICE report obtained by Scripps News.

Since the start of the immigration crackdown, at least four detainees have died while in custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. The attorney representing their families has said medical negligence is a factor in all of the cases.

The Department of Homeland Security says it is longstanding practice to provide immigrants with a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, but the new report says ICE waived the two-week deadline at Adelanto in July 2025 to deal with a backlog of medical cases as the detained population surged.

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DHS has not answered questions about the suspended health checks, including whether they remain in place at Adelanto and other ICE detention centers.

The finding is part of a March 2026 mortality review by ICE that examined the death of 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe who died of a skin infection that worsened at Adelanto, a facility owned at the time by The GEO Group under government contract. The company has since sold the detention center to DHS.

The ICE mortality review says the care Ayala-Uribe received at Adelanto deviated beyond safe limits of practice.

Ayala-Uribe, who came to the U.S. from Mexico with his family at age four, was arrested by ICE last year at the California car wash where he worked for 15 years. He had lost DACA protection after two DUI convictions.

The ICE document outlines a series of failures by Adelanto medical staff, beginning with Ayala-Uribe did not receiving the comprehensive health assessment that should have occurred within 14 days of his arrival at Adelanto.

About a month later, Ayala-Uribe began complaining of pain in his left buttock. An autopsy found it was an abscess.

Medical staff overseen by the GEO Group took two days to diagnose the infection, the report said. A doctor, who diagnosed Ayala-Uribe over the phone, initially mistook the abscess for a hemorrhoid, it said.

Nurses then failed to perform the twice daily wellness checks ordered by the doctor.

By the time medical staff transferred Ayala-Uribe to a hospital, it was too late to save him and he died.

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The mortality review found four violations of national detention standards at Adelanto related to medical care, supporting claims by Ayala-Uribe's family that he did not receive proper care while detained.

Honestly for me it was medical negligence, his mother Lucia Uribe told Scripps News in an interview this past May. He said no one was attending to him. He said mom I cant take it anymore. I cant.

The GEO Group, which owned Adelanto before the U.S. government bought it this month, told Scripps News to send inquiries to ICE.

DHS, which answers questions for ICE, would not respond to questions about the findings in the newly obtained report.

The Adelanto ICE Processing Center had an average daily population of more than 1,800 detainees as of July.

A Tennessee judge has ordered the state to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution of Christa Pike.

The ruling followed an emergency hearing where Pike's attorneys shared new details about her condition.

Her attorneys told the judge that Pike, who remains hospitalized, is only able to speak "limitedly" after regaining consciousness a day ago.

The judge approved a request ordering the state to preserve all evidence from Sept. 30, when two attempts to execute Pike by lethal injection failed. That includes drugs, syringes, tubing, medical supplies and anything else that was in the execution room.

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The judge did not immediately rule on a request to make it easier for Pike to communicate with her attorneys from the hospital or to have her handcuffs removed, as her attorneys say doctors have requested.

Pike is believed to be the only person in the U.S. to survive an execution attempt. Her attorneys had warned that complications were possible because of Pike's small veins and history of difficulty with blood draws.

An attorney representing the Tennessee Department of Correction told the judge there are currently no plans to attempt to execute Pike again.

Pike's attorneys argue that another attempt to execute her would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. They are asking for her sentence to be reduced to life in prison for the 1995 murder of a classmate

A political action committee called Think Big spent over $8 million trying to keep Alex Bores from winning a seat in Congress.

Bores, who backed artificial intelligence regulation as a state lawmaker in New York, became the first major target of pro-A.I. interest groups, which are spending tens of millions of dollars to influence the 2026 midterm election.

Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Scripps News show Think Big receives most of its money from a new super PAC named Leading the Future.

The group is funded by $125 million from donors including Greg Brockman, president of ChatGPT owner OpenAI, as well as Marc Andreessen and Benjamin Horowitz. Andreessen and Horowitz are among the largest investors in A.I. companies, leading the push to construct more data centers.

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This is a really small group of people that wants to make a very big splash in the election, said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. It is absolutely working, and it is absolutely going to pay off once the new Congress takes office.

FEC reports show millions of dollars linked to Leading the Future have already bought television ads, text messages and direct mailers in 36 House and Senate races.

The spending has benefited a mix of Democrats and Republicans from all over the nation, with clusters in Georgia, New York and Texas, where data center development is concentrated.

Whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, if they're willing to, whether it is build a data center or deregulate AI, in that jurisdiction, I think that's the main driver behind the spending, Ghosh said.

A statement on Leading the Future's website says it is focused on advancing a positive, forward-looking agenda for AI innovation in Washington, D.C. and across the states.

A second A.I.-aligned super PAC, Public First Action, has raised $80 million. Half of the donations have come from Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot. Public First Action says it supports candidates who agree with their vision of more government oversight of A.I.

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We have just never seen the kind of spending on this scale and size and scope, said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United. These AI companies, they are reckoning with the fact that spending millions of in elections is worth it.

Alex Bores lost his race and blamed A.I. oligarchs.

FEC filings show tens of millions of dollars donated by A.I. interests available to spend between now and Election Day.