After 15 Months in Detention, Georgia Barber Pledges Continued Fight

Rodney Taylor came home a free man after more than 15 months in immigration detention, but his case now stands as a warning about what prolonged custody can do to a medically vulnerable detainee. The Georgia barber and father of seven, a double amputee, said detention at Stewart was “hell,” and described the strain of trying to charge prosthetics and going without meals for weeks because of the distance to food.

Taylor’s ordeal began when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him on January 15, 2025, outside his Loganville home. He was taken to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, a privately run ICE facility about 140 miles southwest of Atlanta, and held there while advocates and family members fought to keep him from being deported. Taylor came to the United States with his mother from Liberia at age 2 for medical treatment, later built a life in Gwinnett County as a barber, and had lived in Georgia for decades. Supporters said his detention stemmed from a burglary conviction from when he was 16, even though the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole pardoned him in 2010.

The fight over Taylor’s case intensified as his health worsened. In March 2026, lawmakers, advocates and family members delivered a petition with more than 7,500 signatures to ICE, urging officials to stop his deportation. Mildred Danis-Taylor said her husband had gone weeks without medical attention and feared he could die in detention. Advocacy groups said he suffered serious medical neglect at Stewart and that his condition deteriorated inside the facility, where access to care became a central issue as the months passed.

A coalition that included El Refugio, We Are CASA, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Columbus GA Indivisible, Black Diaspora Liberty Initiative, Progress Georgia and AAAJ-Atlanta pushed the campaign forward, and We Are CASA said it drew support from 21 members of Congress and about half a dozen Georgia legislators. Among the elected officials pressing ICE were Sen. Raphael Warnock, Reps. Lucy McBath and Pramila Jayapal, and state Reps. Gabriel Sanchez, Segun Adeyina, Jasmine Clark and Josh McLaurin.

Taylor’s release in early May 2026 reunited him with his family, but it also sharpened scrutiny of the detention system that held him so long. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s October 2025 investigation found more than 80 credible cases of medical neglect and reviewed more than 500 reports of abuse and neglect. In May 2026, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Trump administration’s mandatory no-bond policy, a ruling that could affect detainees at Stewart and similar facilities as their cases move forward. Taylor has said he does not intend to disappear from the public debate, and his release has become part of a larger question about who gets trapped inside the system, and why it takes so long to get them out.