Local immigration detention quotas arbitrarily funnel people into a sprawling system of unaccountable incarceration
The United States has the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world with hundreds of thousands of individuals passing through detention each year. The expansion of the system was in part due to an arbitrary quota from Congress, in place from 2009 until 2017, that required the incarceration of 34,000 immigrants in detention at any given time. This quota acted as an artificial floor, propping up the size of the detention system and has remained a marker for detention funding appropriations since then.
The bed quota was removed during the funding negotiations of May 2017 after a long-fought campaign, but it was a hollow victory as the number of people held in immigration detention far exceeded the original quota as the result of a surge in anti-immigrant policies throughout the Trump Administration and Congress continues to fund ICE detention at astronomical levels.
While the national detention bed quota is gone, at least for now, an underlying network of local quotas remains written into detention contracts. These local quotas require ICE to pay for the capacity to detain a minimum number of people at detention centers and jails which, are operated by private prison corporations or local governments.
Local quotas, referred to as guaranteed minimums in detention facility contracts, ensure a profit-stream and can be found in at least half of ICE’s field offices. These contractual provisions promise that ICE will pay to have the capacity to detain a specific number of people in a given facility regardless of how many people are actually detained there under ICE custody. And as a perverse incentive, ICE agents are then encouraged to increase enforcement in order to maximize taxpayer dollars that are being spent to detain people. (See our report: Banking on Detention: Local Lockup Quotas & the Immigrant Dragnet)
These quotas have become a rigid part of the immigration detention system and must be eliminated. Detention quotas are not only fiscally irresponsible and wasteful, but they help drive policies that continue to deprive liberty and separate immigrants from their loved ones.
Learn More About Local Lockup Quotas
- Detention Watch Network and Center for Constitutional Rights Report
Banking on Detention: Local Lockup Quotas & the Immigrant Dragnet - Detention Watch Network and Center for Constitutional Rights Report
Banking on Detention 2016 Update