Washington, DC – Today, 193 immigrant justice organizations sent a letter to President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, urging the administration to take decisive action to prevent catastrophe for millions of people and avoid handing the keys to an expanded and inhumane detention and deportation system to the next administration.
Specifically, the letter implores the administration to:
- Close detention facilities
- Halt all detention expansion efforts
- Release people from detention
The letter states: “In your remaining months in office, you have an opportunity to honor your stated commitments to the dignity and humane treatment of all people, including those who immigrate to our nation, before the next president follows through on his mass deportation plans, separating families and upending the lives of millions of people in the process.”
The letter also highlights how ICE has been actively seeking to expand detention capacity through direct and indirect negotiations with private prison corporations and other entities over the last four years. Just this year, the agency issued two Requests for Information seeking to massively expand the detention system across multiple states. Providing the incoming administration with an expanded system will have disastrous effects on our immigrant and mixed-status community members.
The letter states: “To protect families and prevent separations, you must take all possible action to prevent the incoming administration from being able to easily expand detention capacity, including by pressuring Congress to pass a reduced appropriation for immigration detention.”
The full text of the letter can be found here.
###
Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.