Progressive champion Rep. Pramila Jayapal leads 100 House members in calling on the Biden administration to stop its expansion of the cruel and inhumane immigration detention system, including its continued use of for-profit facilities despite a campaign pledge opposing the federal use of such detention.
“Following the White House Executive Order ending privately operated prisons, members of congress called for the President to expand the order to include” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, lawmakers tell Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and acting ICE Director Tae Johnson. “Unfortunately, it appears that ICE is moving in the opposite direction.”
Legislators cite a number of expanded or altogether new contracts that stand to detain thousands more immigrants, including a new agreement with private prison profiteer GEO Group to detain up to 1,875 people at Moshannon Valley Correctional Center, a former Bureau of Prisons jail in Pennsylvania. And while the administration made the humane decision last year to no longer detain moms and kids at a migrant family jail in the state, it will still be used to detain adult women.
“Similarly, we are concerned that the private prison company CoreCivic may also be looking to ICE to take over an expiring U.S. Marshals Services contract with the West Tennessee Detention Facility,” lawmakers continued in the letter to Mayorkas and Johnson, the latter of whom is a holdover from the previous administration. “These facilities all have a long-documented history of substandard conditions and abuse.”
The letter cites Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, where women horrifically abused by odious gynecologist Mahendra Amin had been held. Mayorkas ordered the termination of the facility’s contract last year. It also cites CoreCivic-operated Otay Mesa Detention Facility in California, where detained immigrants were further traumatized by an abusive psychologist, a civil rights complaint recently said. While lawmakers have called for an end to the facility’s contract, it remains open.
“We are also concerned that ICE has extended existing contracts and entered into new ones in an effort to get ahead of changes in state and local law,” lawmakers continued. They note ICE, GEO Group, and CoreCivic have colluded to prolong agreements despite California, New Jersey, and Washington state laws fighting back against mass immigration detention. “ICE must not be permitted to bypass state and local authority in this manner,” they said, urging the administration to suspend ICE’s expansion, pause any negotiations relating to new or existing contracts, and “embrace community-based alternatives to detention.” See the full letter and signatories here.
Their letter follows a similar call from nearly 1,000 faith leaders this past January, which urged the president “to reverse course” on ICE detention, noting “the number of people in detention has sky-rocketed” since he took office a year ago.
“The values of President Biden’s faith tradition are common across faith traditions represented in the Interfaith Immigration Coalition: to welcome the immigrant in our midst, to love our neighbors, and to proclaim freedom for the oppressed,” said Church World Service Advocacy Manager and Interfaith Immigration Coalition Co-chair Elissa Diaz. “President Biden’s decision to expand immigrant detention not only goes against these values of our faith, but also the promises he made to immigrants just one year ago.”
ICE detention isn’t just cruel and massively expensive (more Democrats need to be fighting to slash ICE’s massive $8 billion annual budget), it’s also simply unnecessary. “12,336 out of 17,984—or 68.6%—held in ICE detention have no criminal record, according to data current as of February 27, 2022,” Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse said. “Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
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