Featured Issue: Immigration Detention and Alternatives to Detention

AILA calls on Congress to significantly reduce and phase out the use of immigration detention for enforcement purposes.

By The Numbers

• Current number of people in detention: see TRAC Immigration page for current numbers.
• FY2023 projected average daily cost of detaining an adult immigrant: $148.62/day
• FY2023 House and Senate ICE detention funding (proposed): 25,000 average daily population (ADP) at a cost of $2.4 billion
• President Biden’s FY2023 ICE detention funding request: 25,000 ADP at a cost of $2.4 billion
• FY2022 current ICE detention funding: 34,000 ADP at a cost of $2.9 billion

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Background

Created in 2003, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over 22,000 full-time employees, with a total annual budget of more than $8 billion. The agency has three core operational directorates: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA).

Immigration enforcement, including taking people into custody, is the largest single area of responsibility for ICE. Inside detention centers, ICE detains noncitizens from the interior of the country and those transferred from the border.

Noncitizens are detained across America in a sprawling network of private and public detention facilities. Most of these facilities operate through contracts between ICE (or, less commonly, the U.S. Marshals Service) and localities for the purposes of detaining noncitizens. In some cases, localities subsequently sub-contract services for operating detention facilities to private prison companies. In other instances, localities reserve space in local, county, or state jails and prisons for the purposes of detaining immigrants. In all cases, localities are financially incentivized to detain individuals.

Immigration detention facilities, regardless of the type of contracts, have been the sites of serious and repeated allegations of abuse, including allegations of sexual assault, violations of religious freedom, medical neglect, and the punitive use of solitary confinement. In 2020, the U.S. had the highest number of deaths in ICE adult detention since 2005.

Purpose

Civil immigration detention works mainly to facilitate deportation. While ICE has the authority to permit most noncitizens to proceed with their removal cases on the non-detained docket, it frequently defaults to detention. Only a small portion of individuals are considered “mandatory detention” and even those individuals may be released based on certain exceptions.

Access to counsel is frequently an issue. One example is the ability of noncitizens to receive crucial legal and medical information in their primary language. For example, Indigenous, African, and Caribbean speakers often report the lack of interpreter/translation access while in detention.

Reducing and Phasing Out Detention

Detention is overused and too often implemented as part of punitive policies to deter immigration and against noncitizens who are not a flight risk or a threat to public safety, including people seeking protection in this country. For all these reasons and more, AILA is calling for the dramatic reduction and eventual phasing out of immigration detention.

As part of our efforts to reduce and phase out immigration detention, AILA and coalition partners are demanding significant cuts to the ICE budget. Instead, Congress should fund community-based case management programs to be operated by experienced nonprofit immigration and refugee service providers or other nonprofits with experience in case-management-focused social service programs. These programs would replace physical custody and “alternative to detention” programs, which rely on electronic monitoring, such as the use of ankle monitors. Provision of legal representation through these providers will also be key.

Advocacy and Resources

Take Action

• Take Action: Tell Congress to Reduce ICE Detention Funding – Congress missed the mark and funded a daily population of 34,000 detention beds for FY2022—keeping detention funding at the same level as former President Trump. We need your help in urging Congress to reduce ICE detention funding for FY2023. Take action today!

Reports and Briefings

• Policy Brief: Moving the Nation Forward by Leaving Immigration Detention Behind - March 25, 2021
• Alternatives to Detention: An Overview – American Immigration Council Fact Sheet
• Community Support for Migrants Navigating the U.S. Immigration System - February 26, 2021
  
  • American Immigration Council’s fact sheet on community support for migrants navigating the U.S. immigration system and how it can be an alternative to detention.
• American Immigration Council Special Report: "Measuring In Absentia Removal in Immigration Court," Ingrid Eagly, Esq. and Steven Shafer, Esq. - January 28, 2021
  
  • Analysis of federal government data reveals that 83 percent of all non-detained immigrants with completed or pending removal cases from fiscal years 2008 through 2018 attended all of their court hearings, demonstrating why detention is unnecessary to ensure people appear in court.
• Center for American Progress Report: Immigration Detention Is Dangerous for Women's Health and Rights - October 21, 2019

Data

• ICE Provides Data on Detention, Alternatives to Detention, and ICE Facilities – May 7, 2021
• Mapping U.S. Immigration Detention
  
  • Interactive Map of U.S. immigration Detention by Freedom for Immigrants.
• Tracking COVID-19 in Immigration Detention
  
  • A Dashboard of ICE Data collected and updated by Vera Institute of Justice.

Government Reports

• Deaths at Adult Detention Centers - AILA provides a continually updated list of press releases announcing deaths in adult immigration detention.
• U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO): Alternatives to Detention: ICE needs to Better Assess Program Performance and Improve Contract Oversight – June 22, 2022
• The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman Releases 2021 Annual Report – April 29, 2022
• ICE Release “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program Report for Fiscal Years 2017-2020” – April 11, 2022
• ICE Releases Annual Report for FY2021 - March 11, 2022

Congressional Action

• Over 100 House Democrats Send Letter to DHS to Halt Immigration Detention - March 10, 2022
• AILA and Partners Send Letter to Congress on Defund Hate’s NGO Cuts for 2023= April 21, 2022
• House Committee on Oversight and Reform Releases Report on Mistreatment of Detained Immigrants – September 1, 2020

Media Coverage on the Need to End Immigration Detention

• The Intercept: “The Worst Day of My Life” ICE Jail Nurse Sexually Assaulted Migrant Women, Complaint Letter Says,” - July 13, 2022
  
  • The allegations of sexual assault and harassment are part of a broader series of troubling complaints levied by women who have been detained at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
• Roll Call: ICE Claims ‘Unabated’ Legal Access in Detention during Pandemic. Legal Groups Dispute ICE’s Report to Congress, Outline Ongoing Concerns. – March 22, 2022.
• Los Angeles Times (Op-Ed): End profit-driven detention in the immigration system as well as federal prisons – December 15, 2021
• Bloomberg News: The Origins of American Immigration Detention – July 20, 2021
  
  • In this visual explainer, the origins of immigration detention in the U.S. and how it’s taken root as part of our migration system are presented using informative graphics and data.
• The Nation: Black Immigrants Matter - March 24, 2021
  
  • Jack Herrera interviews Guerline Jozef, founder of Haitian Bridge Alliance, on how mass detention began with the detention of Haitian immigrants and black immigrants continue to face excessively high rates of detention and deportation, including holding the record for the longest and second longest period of time in detention (10 years and 9 years respectively).
• Think Immigration: Prolonged and Indefinite Detention Is Inhumane and Must End – January 11, 2021
  
  • In this blog post, Immigration Justice Campaign National Advocacy Manager Katy Murdza describes how ICE is indefinitely detaining people far past the time allowed by law, and why the Justice Campaign will be advocating for the abolition of immigration detention in 2021.
• Los Angeles Times: 19 Women Allege Medical Abuse in Georgia Immigration Detention – October 22, 2020
  
  • The Los Angeles Times reports that, according to medical experts, at least 19 women at Georgia's Irwin County Detention Center were pressured into overly aggressive or medically unnecessary surgery. The medical team conducted its review in tandem with a coalition of advocates including AILA.

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 21031937.