Advocates are reiterating their appeals to President Joe Biden to keep his promise to shut down privately run US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in the wake of a report documenting abuses that undocumented immigrants experienced while in federal custody.
Following the publication of an NPR article this week that highlighted horrifying medical, mental, and physical traumas that immigrants endured while under federal supervision, immigration attorneys and human rights organizations are incensed with the Biden administration.
FOIA Reveals Detention Neglect in Private Prisons
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council in Washington, made the statement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
They uncovered through FOIA damning evidence of the severe medical neglect that occurs in ICE detention centers, most of which are run by private prisons or are contracted-out county jails, he added.
For the housing of immigrants, ICE operates more than 200 detention facilities and contracts with regional jails.
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University in New York, there were 29,731 persons living in more than 115 facilities as of mid-August.
According to Reuters, more than 90% of detainees were housed in privately owned facilities as of July, up from 80% during the Trump administration.
Since 2021, both the number of detentions and the income for one major contractor, the GEO Group, have gradually increased. According to its financial disclosures, the GEO Group earned more than $1 billion in 2022.
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Experts Reveal ICE Facility Conditions
On their trip through 16 states, experts paid by the government to conduct an internal assessment of dozens of contracted local prisons and ICE detention facilities found shocking conditions.
In one instance, despite having surgical drains still implanted in his body and an open wound, a man at an ICE facility in Michigan was sent back to the open population area of the jail after undergoing surgery.
Biden’s lack of action on a pledge he made as a presidential candidate to end for-profit businesses running ICE’s detention centers if elected has been equally upsetting to the immigrant advocacy community.
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