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.

Take Action: Support the Work of Local Communities and Create Alternatives to Detention

AILA urges a cost efficient and impactful approach for arriving migrants that results in high compliance rates. Tell Congress to support funding for effective alternatives to physical detention or restrictive supervision and electronic monitoring programs.


By The Numbers


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

Data

Government Reports

Legislative and Administrative Advocacy

Media Coverage on the Need to End Immigration Detention

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 21031937.