Washington, DC — This week at the National Sheriffs’ Association’s annual conference, Sheriff Jonathan Horton said the Etowah County Jail (Etowah) in Alabama will soon detain people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. With a capacity of over 865 beds, Etowah has not detained people in ICE custody since ending its contract in March 2022 amidst longstanding criticism and well-documented abuse. At the time, the termination of the ICE detention contract at Etowah was widely celebrated by immigrant justice advocates, faith leaders, and community members across the state and around the country as people demanded to shut down abusive detention centers. Now, three years later, Tom Homan, ICE Deputy Director, is working to execute Trump’s plan to triple the immigration detention system’s capacity, with Sheriffs and county jails as key collaborators.
For more than two decades, people imprisoned in immigration detention at Etowah were subject to its harsh conditions, including zero access to outdoor recreation, inadequate medical and mental health care, meager and barely edible food, and the longest average length of stay for people detained system-wide. These punitive conditions, detailed in a 2021 brief sent to ICE and the Biden administration by Detention Watch Network and the Shut Down Etowah Campaign, are exacerbated by the jail’s remote location which impedes access to legal representation, family and other support networks. ICE first looked to end the Etowah contract in 2010, but politicians intervened to block this move despite the facility’s chronic issues. Six years later, in its first “super recommendation” memo, the civil rights office of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called on ICE again to close the facility to no avail.
Immigrant justice advocates in Alabama and around the country denounce the re-opening of Etowah for ICE custody:
Karim Golding, Founder of The Law Library/ Organizer at Freedom to Thrive, said:
“I spent four years detained at Etowah, a facility that operated with no regard for human dignity, safety, or the law. The inhumane conditions weren’t just neglect—they were deliberate. This place consistently violated the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), with security and safety nearly nonexistent. When I heard the news of immigration detention ending at Etowah, I wasn’t excited. I knew that the abuses didn’t stop with immigrants—U.S. citizens were also being mistreated, violated, and ignored. This was a place where quarantine protocols meant nothing during the pandemic. Officers were forced to work without protective gear. People got sick, and Etowah didn’t care. I know this firsthand because I became a COVID long-hauler there. This is the same facility where a male inmate was allowed to rape a female inmate in solitary confinement, unchecked and unpunished.
We fought to shut this place down because we knew the truth—detention isn’t about safety or justice; it’s about cruelty, control, and profit. They locked people away, denied them medical care, ignored their suffering, and allowed the worst kinds of violence to happen under their watch. The thought of this place reopening should enrage everyone. We can’t afford to let this cycle of abuse continue. Etowah was shut down for a reason. We need to make sure it stays that way—not just here, but everywhere. Detention destroys lives, separates families, and strips people of their humanity. We can’t allow our progress to be reversed.”
Jessica Vosburgh, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and former director of Adelante Alabama Worker Center, said:
“I am enraged to witness this backslide. For years, I was part of the campaign calling for the closure of the ICE prison hidden away inside the Etowah County Jail, and I represented dozens of individuals challenging their unlawful detention there; some had been warehoused in Etowah for years with no end in sight, many ultimately won their freedom. The history of human rights abuses in Etowah was well documented, thanks to the tireless work of courageous individuals inside the jail and advocates on the outside—leading to the cancellation of the county’s contract with ICE. This is a lesson for all of us committed to abolishing prisons in all their forms: it is not enough to end a detention contract or empty a jail—we need to dismantle the physical structures that are used to cage people, and reinvest public funds in places and programs that actually keep us safe and allow our communities to thrive.”
Tania Wolf, Southeast Advocacy Manager, National Immigration Project, said:
“With its long and documented record of human rights abuses, Etowah County Detention Center was an egregious example of the cruelty and inhumanity of the immigration detention system in this country. Advocates and community members fought tirelessly to shut down the detention center – to reopen it is an affront to the local community and advocates across the country. To be clear, the plan to reopen this facility is not only a reckless waste of taxpayer dollars and local resources—it is also a direct attack on our immigrant neighbors, aiming only to fuel Trump’s mass expansion of immigration detention. We must come together once again to reject this plan and make clear that our community members belong with their loved ones, not behind bars.”
Marcela Hernandez, Organizing and Membership Director of Detention Watch Network, said:
“The Etowah County Detention Center exemplified everything that is wrong with immigration detention. For over a decade, advocates fought long and hard for its closure to keep people safe and invest critical resources into the community instead of jailing immigrants. The Sheriff's decision to re-open Etowah for ICE is an about-face of the community and feeds into Trump’s massive immigration detention expansion plan, which 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 expanding the detention system that is rife with abuse. This moment demands a national outcry — our elected officials cannot remain silent on Trump’s excessive cruelty. Rather, they must vocally oppose this mass detention and deportation agenda.”
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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.