Washington, DC — Last week The Washington Post obtained a report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is seeking to more than double its immigration detention capacity by opening four new 10,000 bed detention facilities, as well as 14 smaller sites with space for 700 to 1,000 people. The report provides insight into the administration’s plan of action to achieve Trump’s cruel agenda as outlined in the slew of day-one anti-immigrant executive orders that strives to lock up thousands more people and impact detention by:
- Directing ICE and CBP to expand the use of fast tracked deportations, also known as expedited removal,
- Requiring “maximum” immigration detention, making it harder for people to be released from detention,
- Terminating various legal pathways and calling for the termination of parole programs,
- Rescinding the Biden administration’s enforcement priorities, meaning more people will be targeted for detention and deportation, and
- Rescinding the Biden administration’s executive order that ended the use of private prisons by the federal government.
There are already nearly 40,000 people locked up in ICE detention. At its height, some 55,000 people were in ICE custody during the previous Trump administration. In ICE detention centers people are deprived of their liberty, denied access to lawyers, separated from their loved ones and subjected to horrific conditions, including medical neglect and abuse. People who have been detained, elected officials, and immigrant justice advocates have repeatedly documented how ICE detention is an inhumane, unjust, and unnecessary practice that puts people's lives in jeopardy and separates families and communities at the expense of taxpayer dollars. With the reported plan of action, ICE would likely erect detention camps on military bases, further entrenching immigration enforcement within the Department of Defense.
With the threat of a massive expansion of the detention system, immigrant justice advocates across the country are ringing the alarm and demanding elected leaders reject Trump’s plan. They issued the below statements:
Stacy Suh, Program Director at Detention Watch Network, said:
“Communities will continue to organize against detention expansion every step of the way. If realized, Trump’s immigration detention expansion will tear apart families, put people’s lives in danger, and cost taxpayers greatly. It will also increase the targeting and racial profiling of people within their communities based on what they look like, the language they speak, and where they work while further exacerbating the detention system that is rife with abuse. This moment demands a national outcry — our elected officials cannot afford to remain silent on Trump’s excessive cruelty. Rather, they must vocally oppose Trump’s mass detention and deportation agenda by denying Trump the resources he needs to carry out his agenda including by cutting funds to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).”
Heidi Altman, Vice President of Policy at the National Immigration Law Center, said:
“The Trump administration has reshaped the U.S. immigration and refugee system in a mere seven days. Taken together, their actions allow multiple federal agencies to join ICE and CBP in targeting immigrant communities for family separation. Immigration detention centers are already the sites of suffering, abuse, and isolation – these harms will compound, with legal access and human rights monitoring cut off or compromised. We call on Members of Congress to ensure that federal dollars are not provided to facilitate President Trump, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan’s cruel vision.”
Sameera Hafiz, Policy Director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said:
“Sanctuary policies keep families together and help build safer healthier communities. Sanctuary policies send a strong message that the needs of all community members are valued and protected. Deportation is painful and cruel - destabilizing families and creating fear in communities will never make us safer.”
Eunice Cho, Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, said:
“On any given day, ICE detains tens of thousands of people across the country — often in facilities rampant with abuse. Trump's proposed expansion of immigration detention would only further line the pockets of the private prison industry and put countless people — including longtime residents, parents of U.S. citizens, and more — into harm's way. Our tax dollars should not be funding a radical expansion of detention that will only bring cruelty and devastation to our communities.”
Jesse Franzblau, Senior Policy Analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said:
“Expanding the abusive immigration detention system is a central part of the Trump administration's assault on immigrant communities, which hinges on using ICE jails as staging grounds for the deportations. The expansion will only exacerbate the abuses people experience on a daily basis and come with significant public costs, as more taxpayer dollars are siphoned to private prison companies profiting each year off detention contracts. Our elected officials need to stand with communities impacted by immigration detention and prevent any resources for more ICE facilities.”
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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.