The ACLU is urging the Biden administration to shut down over three dozen Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in light of decreasing numbers of people detained and human rights concerns.
“The Biden administration was elected with a mandate to fix our broken immigration system, and immigrant detention is an early test of its resolve,” Naureen Shah, senior advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement.
The rights group laid out its demand in a letter sent Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that singles out 39 detention facilitates for closure. Spanning 15 states, the facilities were either opened by the Trump administration without adequate justification, are in a location that limits detainees’ access to legal counsel or medical care, or have been the site of “egregious patterns of inhumane treatment or conditions,” according to the ACLU.
Included in the list are facilities on the Detention Watch Network’s “First Ten” campaign. The ACLU is a cosponsor of that campaign, and said in the letter it endorses the network’s roadmap for detention shutdowns.
Among the facilities named is the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, where detainees say they were subjected to forced medical procedures and abuse.
From the letter:
Also problematic is another facility in Georgia, the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, according to the letter.
The ACLU further pointed to the unnecessary “enormous taxpayer expense” for the detention centers given that there are currently “thousands of empty beds,” for which, according to an NPR analysis this month, ICE pays $1 million a day. The reporting attributed the lower numbers to ICE’s release of hundreds of people to lower the risk of Covid-19 and the fact that the Biden administration is arresting and detaining fewer “unauthorized immigrants.”
“Closing detention sites should be an easy decision,” said Shah. She urged President Joe Biden to seize what she called “a unique moment to shrink the infrastructure that’s been used to abuse and traumatize immigrants for decades.”
“It’s time to end our nation’s newest system of mass incarceration of Black and Brown people,” said Shah.
The Detention Watch Network issued a similar message Wednesday.
“The evidence for why the administration needs to take immediate action on ICE detention is overwhelming,” said Silky Shah, the group’s executive director. “We urge the Biden administration to release people from detention, shut down detention centers, and end detention contracts now.”