Representative Pramila Jayapal and 20 members of Congress are seeking the release of Rodney Taylor from Stewart detention center in Georgia, several weeks after the one-year anniversary of when agents seized the double amputee outside his suburban home in Loganville, about 40 miles north-east of Atlanta.
The representatives sent a two-page letter on 17 February to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Todd Lyons, the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), drawing extensively from the Guardian’s reporting and quoting several stories in detail with “grave concern” due to Taylor’s “extreme hardship in detention and [because] his health is continuing to deteriorate”.
Several experts told the Guardian they hadn’t seen such a case, with so many members of Congress advocating on behalf of an ICE detainee.
Taylor’s health issues include not having properly calibrated prosthetic legs, needing new linings for the prosthetics, not being able to charge the prosthetics as needed, high blood pressure and, as of late last year, bone spurs in his back. The lack of silicone linings has caused boils. He has recently been given a wheel chair – something he has never used – but his right hand is missing three fingers, so using it has caused pain in his wrist.
The letter also mentions previously unreported details of Taylor’s conditions at the overcrowded detention center, such as having to crawl through “showers [that] were moldy, covered in feces, and bodily fluids”. Stewart is “no longer providing Mr. Taylor accommodation for meals”, requiring him “to get his meals three times a day by himself” – despite the issues with the prosthetics and the wheelchair.
Mildred Danis-Taylor, Rodney’s wife, told the Guardian that detainees without easy access to bathrooms defecate and urinate in the shower. There’s also mold, blood, food and semen on the floor, she said. For Taylor to shower, he has to take off his prosthetics. Then he has to crawl along the floor to a shower chair.
As for getting to meals, in a call from Stewart on Thursday, Taylor told the Guardian that Jason Streeval, warden of Stewart, said “this is not Uber Eats” when informing him of the recent change.
The details in the letter “leave me speechless”, said Joseph Nwadiuko, a University of Pennsylvania professor of medicine who researches immigration. “These are repeated acts of dehumanization.”
Ryan Gustin, spokesperson for CoreCivic, the company that runs Stewart detention center, wrote in an email that he couldn’t comment due to medical privacy laws – but that the company is “committed to providing safe, humane and respectful care for everyone entrusted to us”. In answer to follow-up questions about Taylor’s experience in the shower and Streeval’s remark, Gustin said: “We vehemently deny these allegations.”
ICE did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Prayapal, serves on the House judiciary committee, where she is a ranking member of a subcommittee dealing with immigration. Other signees include California’s Ro Khanna and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib.
An effort seeking an ICE detainee’s release for medical reasons backed by so many lawmakers is unusual, said Nwadiuko.
“This many members of Congress being on the same page is not something I’ve seen,” he said.
It is also the second time the Guardian’s coverage of Taylor’s case has been cited, after senator Raphael Warnock wrote Noem on 29 October 2025, urging the her to consider the detainee’s “pressing health issues” – while stopping short of seeking his release.
Nwadiuko said that Taylor’s case is one of “missed opportunities”, where he continues being “exposed to risks that could endanger his life”.
Brought to the US from Liberia by his mother on a medical visa when he was a small child, Taylor has had 16 operations. Now 47, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life. He got engaged only 10 days before ICE detained him in January. The agency apparently seized him due to a burglary conviction from when he was a teenager and for which the state of Georgia pardoned him in 2010, according to attorney Sarah Owings, who shared Taylor’s paperwork with the Guardian.
Taylor has a pending application for US residence – commonly known as a green card – but has not been released on bond, despite having a habeas corpus petition before a federal judge since September. He is a barber and active in cancer prevention efforts in his community.
Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor specializing in the US immigration enforcement system, said that ICE doesn’t provide detailed data on the amount of detainees in its system with disabilities – “so you have to rely on exemplary cases such as Taylor’s to understand what’s going on with how people with disabilities are treated”.
“This treatment is only possible when you have a president who is using dehumanizing rhetoric and a system built on profit,” he said.
Another factor, Kocher noted, is the Trump administration’s removal of oversight, with the decimation of the federal office for civil rights and civil liberties (CRCL) and the immigration detention ombudsman (Oido).
During the last year, Danis-Taylor, Rodney’s wife, said she had spent $500 a month for Taylor’s calls to her and others.
“It’s a mental health thing,” she said. “He’ll say, ‘Is that a bird I just heard?’”
But as time goes on, Taylor said on the phone from Stewart on Thursday: “My body is deteriorating.” He was grateful that members of Congress had advocated on his behalf – “but when you’re sitting in here, it’s hard to see the end of the tunnel”.
“If ICE brushes off this letter,” said Kocher, “it’s evidence for saying that ICE is, to put it crudely, out of control.”
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