Rising immigration detention infuriates advocates

Human rights advocates see the Biden administration’s expansion of detention-dependent immigration enforcement as a betrayal, driven by political headwinds rather than operational needs.

In a letter to President Biden delivered on Thursday, 200 organizations expressed “outrage at your administration’s expansion of the cruel and unnecessary immigration detention system.”

The groups, most of them long-time opponents of the practice of detaining immigrants, are outraged by the skyrocketing spending on detention, with $3.4 billion going to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention bed space ( ICE) in the $1.2 trillion federal spending package that Biden signed in March.

“Our organizations work with and advocate for people who have been detained in immigration detention. They bear lifelong scars from the mistreatment and dehumanization they have suffered due to the United States’ reliance on detention, primarily through private prisons and county jails. His administration is further cementing this trust, marking a complete betrayal of his campaign promises,” the groups wrote.

The political shift and massive increase in migration have forced the Biden administration to move to the right on a range of immigration and border security issues, souring relations with human rights advocates who cheered his victory over former President Trump in 2020.

Although many aspects of immigration policy are sensitive points in this relationship, detention is the most bitter.

Under current enforcement procedures, foreign nationals who are scheduled for removal – deportation – are generally detained while awaiting their return flight. Waiting deportees can be arrested regardless of whether they also have a criminal record, even if their immigration violations are entirely administrative, for example in the case of visa overstays.

Officials say that, in proportion to border encounters and the growth of the immigrant population, the expansion of detention space still means that a smaller proportion of the immigrant population is detained than in the past.

In fiscal 2023, ICE made 170,590 administrative arrests and 43% of those detained had prior criminal convictions or pending charges. A year earlier, only 32.5% of foreign nationals detained by ICE had some type of criminal record, according to official data.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a government data tracker located at Syracuse University, 61.3% of ICE detainees on April 7 had no criminal history and “many more had only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”

Administration officials, as in previous administrations, maintain that immigration detention conditions are not prison-like or punitive and are necessary for operational reasons.

But immigration detention has for years accumulated a huge backlog of alleged and substantiated cases of human rights violations and substandard care, both by government watchdogs and outside groups.

“The system that your administration is expanding is rife with abuse and impunity. Your senior officials have been aware of these significant human rights concerns from day one. ICE jails and prisons operate under insufficient standards, with inspections that are notorious for covering up deficiencies,” wrote the groups, which include Amnesty International USA, the National Immigrant Justice Center, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Inadequate medical care results in deaths; LGBTQ individuals in custody experience homophobic and transphobic harassment and abuse; there is often a lack of basic sanitation; Black immigrants face inaccessible employment and violence at unequally high rates; and ICE’s use of solitary confinement regularly meets the United Nations definition of torture.”

When Biden took office, arrests reached a historically low level, largely due to decreased immigration and enforcement during the pandemic.

Human rights advocates saw this as an opportunity to eliminate an enforcement tool they consider unnecessary.

“At the time of his inauguration, fewer than 15,000 people were detained by ICE. This represented a remarkable opportunity to end a wasteful and abusive system,” the groups wrote.

Detention abolitionists have been somewhat emboldened by budget requests for 2023 and 2024, in which the administration requested to reduce detention funding, and by an increasing top-down attitude toward internal review and investigations, including recommendations to close some detention centers with the most flagrant violations.

“In an abrupt change of course, over the past two years, ICE has increased the number of people in custody. The majority of facilities on ICE’s internal closure list remain open, despite numerous reports from advocates and service providers that further document the ineffectiveness of detention and the need for a different approach,” they wrote.

Administration officials say the detention is operationally necessary for removal operations, and even more so with the growing number of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Many of the migrants who are released into the interior of the country have asylum cases that may fail in immigration court or are released into the interior with pre-existing deportation orders. Others may be processed through expedited removal, a quick way to deport foreign nationals who are detained at or near the border within two weeks of entering the country, which often requires detention.

Citing limited resources, the Biden administration rescinded in 2022 an expansion of expedited removal established by the Trump administration, which made eligible for expedited removal any foreign national present in any part of the country who could not prove their lawful presence, or prove they had been in the country. for more than two years.

Still, according to the American Immigration Council, more than 20,000 migrants were placed on accelerated removal between May and December 2023.

And expedited removals represent a fraction of ICE detainees. According to TRAC, 34,580 people were detained by ICE as of April 7.

The Biden administration has significantly changed policy from some Trump-era practices, including expanding alternatives to detention — a series of controversial measures like digital tracking that advocate antipathy but prefer detention.

But advocates and administration officials operate under different paradigms of immigration policy: on the one hand, primarily as an administrative field with broad humanitarian consequences, and on the other, as a hybrid administrative and law enforcement issue subject to physical consequences. mandatory and dependent on tactical deterrence.

“This suffering promotes no rational political goal. Detention does not provide an efficient or ethical means of border processing and certainly does not signal to migrants that they are welcome in the United States. It exists only to further the political objective of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane and misguided – as even the most punitive forms of detention have proven not to dissuade people from seeking safety or a better life,” the groups wrote.