Washington, DC – Today, 221 immigrant justice organizations sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, urging the administration to halt Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) immigration detention expansion efforts, while restoring free phone access to people in detention, and protecting the basic rights of the people in the agency’s custody. The letter outlines an egregious pattern of deteriorating conditions inside detention and ultimately demands that the Biden administration reverse course on immigration and move towards policies that allow people to go through their immigration cases in community with the support of loved ones and access to legal support.
Specifically, the letter raises the following concerns:
- deteriorating conditions at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, including the agency’s recent decision to eliminate a program that provided 520 minutes of free phone calls to people in ICE custody;
- the intent to re-start intakes at the Adelanto facility in California;
- plans to dramatically expand the number of ICE detention facilities nationwide, as demonstrated in the recent “Multi-State Detention Facility Support” Request for Information (RFI) and
- the decision to close the Dilley detention center in Texas only to fund the addition of 1600 detention beds elsewhere.
The letter states: “By working to expand a detention system already plagued by abuse and negligence and simultaneously imposing additional barriers that curtail the ability of people in detention to access the outside world as conditions inside continue to deteriorate, the Biden administration flagrantly breaks the promises it made four years ago to end private detention at the federal level, reduce reliance on immigration detention, and create a more humane immigration system. Detained people, their loved ones, and advocates continue to report on conditions that have worsened over the last four years.”
The letter also highlights recent investigations into the use of solitary confinement, abuse of LGBTQ and HIV positive immigrants, and deaths in immigration detention - where the ACLU, American Oversight, and Physicians for Human Rights found that 95 percent of deaths in immigration detention were preventable or possibly preventable if ICE had provided clinically appropriate medical care.
Detention Watch Network delivered the letter along with an invitation to Secretary Mayorkas, asking him to join a meeting with people who have experienced detention and advocates.
The full text of the letter can be found here.
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