Dozens of rights groups are asking the Biden administration to take steps to curb immigration detention infrastructure before President-elect Donald Trump takes office again in January.
In a letter to Biden and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, almost 200 different rights groups say that the administration has the opportunity to make good on campaign promises like ending the use of for-profit, private prisons and detention centers — where more than 90% of immigrants are currently housed. They’re also asking for the administration to halt detention expansion efforts and allow more people to be released into their communities as they await immigration hearings.
Setareh Ghandehari is the advocacy director with Detention Watch Network, one of the groups behind the letter.
“The current administration, for the past four years has been seeking to expand the detention system, there have been negotiations ongoing and just this past summer there have been requests for information that’s been put out there seeking to expand ICE detention capacity,” she said.
In an August request on the government contracting website SAM.gov, Department of Homeland Security and ICE officials say they’re looking for ways to expand the bed capacity in detention centers near several ICE field offices, including Phoenix — part of a larger effort to increase detention capacity nationwide.
“There are currently requests for contracts from private prison companies on the West Coast, in the Midwest region as well as in New Jersey,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director with the American Immigration Council. “We want the Biden administration to stop that solicitation process because building more detention facilities, putting that infrastructure into place, will make it easier for a new administration to threaten undocumented communities in the interior with deportation and separation from their loved ones.”
Gupta says the Biden administration’s detention expansion efforts have been largely focused on the border. But, under Trump, the type of expansion is expected to change.
“Scaling up of enforcement through worksite raids, community arrests, collaboration with local police that we would expect to see more in the interior of the U.S.,” she said.
Gupta says the administration could do other things, like surge resources to Citizenship and Immigration Services to help immigrants with temporary statuses renew them more quickly to avoid becoming undocumented — including roughly 40,000 DACA recipients with pending renewals with USCIS.
The letter comes after another request from rights groups that asks the Biden administration to expand farmworker protections, allow immigrants with Temporary Protected Status to renew and extend their permits and process worker permits for asylum seekers and refugees.
