How Folkston Detainees Turned Locked-Down Tablets Into a Camera
Four men detained at the Folkston ICE Processing Center in rural Georgia used the facility's own video conferencing software to record a five-minute video about conditions inside and the immigration courts. The Verge
The men appear in facility-issued uniforms. They are from several different countries. One of them, Idris Makhmudov, says he has been detained at Folkston for 27 months.
The video reached the outside through an informal channel. Immigration attorney Samantha Hamilton said she received a YouTube link to the video via a Signal chat. Hamilton is an Atlanta-based attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice and a member of the Shut Down Folkston campaign.
Hamilton said everyone appearing in the video released this weekend has been put into segregation and is facing retaliation. After the release, 45 detainees wrote an open letter detailing conditions at the facility. An estimated 73 detainees are now on a hunger strike.
Detained immigrants at the Georgia ICE facility launched a mass protest against prolonged detention and violations at Folkston, according to an Oct. 7 report. The Guardian
Folkston was a prison before it became an immigrant detention center. That history is clear in limits on hardware. Each pod of 60 to 70 detainees has access to just three or four tablets.
Those tablets run a closed system, with only approved apps and no open internet. Detainees must use GettingOut, proprietary software owned by prison communications company Telmate, to send messages, share photos, or make phone or video calls. The endpoints are shared, accounts are monitored, and there is no general web access.
Telmate is owned by ViaPath Technologies, formerly GlobalTel Link, which is in turn owned by American Securities, a New York City-based private equity firm. Earlier in 2026, Telmate was ordered to pay $4.23 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from a 2020 data breach involving user names, payment details, and social security numbers.
ICE lists Folkston ICE Processing Center (Main) as a detention facility. ICE The detainee information phone number for the Main facility is (912) 496-6905, available between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Detainees at the Main facility cannot receive incoming calls. ICE separately lists Folkston D Ray ICE Processing Center as a detention facility, with a detainee information number of (912) 496-6242 during the same hours. ICE
ICE's Office of Detention Oversight listed a Detention Facility Compliance Inspection at Folkston ICE Processing Center, Folkston, GA for June 2-4, 2026. Separately, Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, died in ICE custody on July 13 while being transferred between detention facilities in Georgia. ICE
The facility also operates a detainee work program paying $1 per day for tasks including cooking, laundry, or cleaning.
The broader context here will be familiar to anyone who has watched locked-down platforms change over time. Constrained systems invite repurposing. A video visitation client becomes a recording studio when no other camera is available. A YouTube upload link passed through Signal becomes a distribution path when direct publishing is blocked.
In my view, the technical details matter more than the novelty of the workaround. Three or four tablets for 60 to 70 people creates long queues and close supervision, and shapes who gets to speak. Proprietary messaging and calling software puts logging, identity, and billing with one vendor. That design makes this kind of exfiltration difficult. It also makes the vendor a single point of failure for privacy, as the breach settlement underlines.
Worth flagging for technology readers is the ownership chain. Carceral communications in the U.S. runs through a small number of intermediaries, here Telmate to ViaPath to private equity ownership. Decisions about video quality, recording defaults, retention, and device provisioning are product decisions. Inside a detention pod, they function as governance.
What this enables, even under retaliation and scarcity, is documentation from inside a closed facility without new hardware. No smuggled phone was needed. The installed base was sufficient.
