Sign the petition: Shut down ICE detention facilities.
While detention is the norm today, until the 1980s, most immigrants were not detained while navigating the legal process. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains over 100,000 immigrants each year, including asylum seekers, long-term residents, and parents of U.S. citizens. The U.S. manages the largest immigration detention system in the world, spending more on immigration enforcement than on all other federal enforcement agencies combined.
Across America, immigrants are detained in one of more than 200 jails and detention centers that make up ICE’s detention system.
Too often, we hear reports of human rights abuses at these facilities, ranging from sexual and physical abuse to medical neglect – including violations that involve children and expecting mothers. ICE detention facilities' mortality rate increases exponentially each year, with 2020 deaths in ICE custody tripling those in 2019.
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas stated in 2021, "We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system. This marks an important first step to realizing that goal. DHS detention facilities and the treatment of individuals in those facilities will be held to our health and safety standards. Where we discover they fall short, we will continue to take action as we are doing today."
But it is Mayorkas and the Biden administration who have come up short, after detention facilities continue patterns of abuse unsuitable for humane conditions.
The Biden administration has promised to end inhumane immigration policies from the Trump administration. Millions of immigrants are still waiting for the administration to fulfill that promise. The Biden administration must follow through on its commitment to immigrant communities and end this inhuman system of mass incarceration.
Sign the petition: Shut down ICE detention facilities.
Across America, immigrants are detained in one of more than 200 jails and detention centers that make up ICE’s detention system.
Too often, we hear reports of human rights abuses at these facilities, ranging from sexual and physical abuse to medical neglect – including violations that involve children and expecting mothers. ICE detention facilities' mortality rate increases exponentially each year, with 2020 deaths in ICE custody tripling those in 2019.
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas stated in 2021, "We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system. This marks an important first step to realizing that goal. DHS detention facilities and the treatment of individuals in those facilities will be held to our health and safety standards. Where we discover they fall short, we will continue to take action as we are doing today."
But it is Mayorkas and the Biden administration who have come up short, after detention facilities continue patterns of abuse unsuitable for humane conditions.
The Biden administration has promised to end inhumane immigration policies from the Trump administration. Millions of immigrants are still waiting for the administration to fulfill that promise. The Biden administration must follow through on its commitment to immigrant communities and end this inhuman system of mass incarceration.
Sign the petition: Shut down ICE detention facilities.
