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"This suffering does not advance any rational policy goal," said the advocacy groups. "It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane, and misguided."
Citing ample evidence of human rights abuses in U.S. immigration detention centers, 200 advocacy groups on Thursday demanded that the Biden administration reverse course on a planned expansion of detention facilities and said President Joe Biden's "further entrenching" of the government's reliance on detaining migrants marks "an utter betrayal" of his campaign promises.
The president's signing of a spending bill last month provided $3.4 billion for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), clearing the way for the agency to make space to jail 41,500 immigrants per day in facilities across the country.
After Biden campaigned on ending the use of for-profit detention centers, said the groups, he took office at a time when fewer than 15,000 people were being held in immigration detention facilities—which gave him "a remarkable opportunity to wind down a wasteful and abusive system."
But after the president's 2023 and 2024 budget requests signaled an intention of reducing detention funding—with ICE itself recommending that numerous facilities be closed due to "critical staffing shortages that have led to safety risks and unsanitary living conditions"—Biden last year requested supplemental detention funding as commentators and Republicans in Congress hammered the administration for allowing so-called "chaos" at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Your FY2025 budget request sought funding for 34,000 beds instead of the 25,000 sought in the two previous cycles," wrote the groups, including Amnesty International USA, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), and the Texas Civil Rights Project. "The result is unsurprising: the FY2024 spending bill you signed provides ICE $3.4 billion to jail an average of 41,500 immigrants per day, historically high funding surpassing all four years of the Trump administration."
The groups, which provide legal aid and other assistance to people who have been detained as migrants, said many of their clients "carry lifelong scars from the mistreatment and dehumanization they endured because of the United States' reliance on detention, mostly through private prisons and county jails."
The administration is seeking to expand a system, said the groups, in which the jails and prisons used have been found to "operate under insufficient standards."
The organizations cited a 2018 ACLU reportthat found inadequate medical care contributed to the deaths of more than half of the detained immigrants who died in custody between December 2015-April 2017; a 2021 case in which an LGBTQ+ man reported "physical and homophobic verbal abuse" at a facility in Louisiana; and the finding by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that the use of solitary confinement in detention centers "regularly meets the United Nations' definition of torture."
Biden signed the spending bill two weeks after Charles Daniel, a 61-year-old migrant from Trinidad and Tobago, died at a detention center operated by the private contractor GEO Group after being held in solitary confinement for four years. ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times in the last five years, according to PHR, for an average of 27 days each; U.N. experts say exceeding 15 days in solitary confinement constitutes torture.
"This suffering does not advance any rational policy goal," said the groups on Thursday. "Detention does not provide an efficient or ethical means of border processing, and it certainly does not indicate to migrants that they are welcome in the United States. It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane, and misguided—as even the most punitive forms of detention have been proven not to deter people from seeking safety or a better life."
Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks government data, found that as of April 7, more than 61% of ICE detainees have no criminal record, while "many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations."
"Increasing the incarceration of immigrants is a grave mistake," said the groups, "and we urgently implore you to reverse course."
"To date your agencies have not forcefully disavowed the program or acknowledged the deep harms of Texas' racist and unlawful enforcement operation."
A coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups on Thursday implored the Biden administration to "take decisive action to condemn" and "cease involvement" in Operation Lone Star, the deadly anti-immigrant campaign launched in 2021 by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, the 108 groups implored the administration "to investigate and end any collaboration" between Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies and Operation Lone Star (OLS).
"In the two years since Texas initiated OLS, we have repeatedly called on DHS and CBP to cease all forms of cooperation with the program," the letter states. "Nevertheless, to date your agencies have not forcefully disavowed the program or acknowledged the deep harms of Texas' racist and unlawful enforcement operation."
"Federal inaction has emboldened Texas officials to employ increasingly brazen, cruel, and deadly enforcement tactics that have caused family separation, death, and daily violations of the civil and human rights of Black and Brown migrants," the signers added.
As the National Immigration Project—which led the letter—noted, these tactics include "pushing people back into the Rio Grande, denying migrants water in extreme heat, and installing life-threatening buoy and razor-wire barriers in and around the river."
"Advocates also report that Texas officers have started using OLS arrests to separate fathers from their families, seemingly with the cooperation of Border Patrol agents," the group added. "These conscience-shocking tactics will only continue in the absence of a decisive federal response."
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department sued Texas over the floating barrier, claiming it "poses threats to navigation and public safety and presents humanitarian concerns," and "has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging U.S. foreign policy."
National Immigration Project executive director Sirine Shebaya said in a statement that "in recent months, we've seen Gov. Greg Abbott employ new and increasingly dangerous and deadly tactics as part of his illicit Operation Lone Star program."
"The federal government has a clear responsibility to not only cease collaboration with Texas officials on Operation Lone Star but also to push back on this unthinkable cruelty," she continued.
"Left unchecked, these hateful policies and inhumane treatment will only continue to escalate," Shebaya added. "As a nationwide membership organization, we will continue working with our members and partners in Texas and across the country to put an end to these horrific human and civil rights abuses."
"Three years into the Biden administration, the number of people held in ICE detention continues to grow, and private prison companies hold an increasingly tight grip on the mass immigration detention system."
The ACLU on Monday said that more than 90% of people held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July were locked up in for-profit facilities, despite promises and an executive order from President Joe Biden to phase out federal private prison contracts for immigrant detention.
"Three years into the Biden administration, the number of people held in ICE detention continues to grow, and private prison companies hold an increasingly tight grip on the mass immigration detention system," ACLU National Prison Project senior staff attorney Eunice Cho wrote in an analysis.
"The federal government's immigration detention system overwhelmingly relies on private prison corporations," Cho added. "Private prison corporations, like the GEO Group, CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, and the Management Training Corporation have pocketed billions from ICE detention contracts in the past two decades."
While campaigning for president in 2020, Biden declared that "the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants." Just days into his presidency in January 2021, he signed an executive order "on reforming our incarceration system to eliminate the use of privately operated criminal detention facilities," a move cheered by progressives.
While the order applied to around 14,000 federal inmates incarcerated in private prisons at the time—or about 9% of the federal prison population and 0.6% of the approximately 2.3 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails—it did not apply to ICE.
"Since then, the number of immigrants detained by ICE—and revenues for private prison companies—have only increased," Cho noted.
According to her report:
As of July 2023, ICE detains on average 30,003 people each day. This is a significant increase from the start of the Biden administration in January 2021, when ICE held an average of 15,444 people in detention each day.
Under the Trump administration, 81% of people detained each day in January 2020 were held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations.
In the first two years of the Biden administration, this number remained relatively unchanged. In September 2021, 79% of people detained each day in ICE custody were held in private detention facilities.
In the last two years, however, this number has markedly increased: as of July 2023, 90.8%of people detained in ICE custody each day are held in detention facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations.
In 2022, GeoGroup raked in over $1 billion from ICE detention contracts, just under 44% of the company's total annual revenue. Competitor CoreCivic made more than $552 million from ICE contracts last year, amounting to 30% of the firm's yearly earnings.
"Despite calls from advocates to decrease funding for ICE detention, Congress appropriated $2.9 billion dollars to hold 34,000 people in ICE detention each day for [fiscal year] 2023," Cho noted.
The Biden administration has "also kept open detention facilities that its own oversight agencies have recommended for closure in light of abusive conditions and safety risks," Cho added, citing multiple migrant deaths at privately operated ICE lockups in New Mexico and Louisiana, as well as sexual abuse of detainees at a county jail in Florida.
A bipartisan U.S. Senate probe last year corroborated numerous allegations of abuse of jailed migrants by staff at detention facilities owned by LaSalle, a company that claims to be "run with family values."
Last week, a pair of advocacy groups published a report detailing widespread human rights abuses of migrants and some U.S. citizens allegedly perpetrated by Department of Homeland Security personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
"The Biden administration can reverse course on immigration detention," Cho asserted. "It should dramatically reduce the number of people in ICE detention, invest in alternatives to detention, and stop allowing private prison companies from profiting by the billions of dollars each year off the suffering of immigrants in detention."