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On Wednesday, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) urged the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to close their immigration detention facilities. The recent move is part of a renewed push for President Biden to follow through on several campaign pledges. The ACLU identified 39 detention centers used by the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that it believes should be closed due to reports of abuse against detainees, limited access to lawyers, and insufficient justification for their opening. A letter wrote by the ACLU says, “ICE is currently paying to maintain thousands of empty beds with lower ICE arrest rates and already-reduced levels of detention arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, at enormous taxpayer expense and wasting hundreds of millions of dollars that would be better spent on alternatives to detention and other programmatic priorities”.

President Joe Biden vowed to utilize alternatives to holding immigrants in detention and to end contracts with for-profit prison companies during the presidential campaign. The letter urged Mayorkas to dramatically downscale immigration detention in light of the historically low number of people in ICE detention. Point to be noted that the number of ICE detainees has reached a historic low under the Biden administration. There are at least 15,000 people in ICE detention, including about 1,500 parents and children in holding facilities for families. Mayorkas said in March that a detention center is not where a family belongs. The Biden administration announced plans to wind down the long-term detention of migrant families in a 5^th March court filing at the US District Court in Los Angeles.

The White House administration ordered the Department of Justice in January to end its reliance on private prisons. But, it has yet to make any announcements regarding for-profit immigration detention centers. A senior advocacy and policy counsel at the ACLU, Naureen Shah said, “The Biden administration’s exclusion of immigration detention facilities in its executive order made no sense given everything we know about human rights abuses occurring at the hands of private contractors who got an incentive to maximize profits in immigration detentions as well as within the criminal legal setting. The administration also failed to put under immediate review all of the contracts ICE has with state and local agencies, where we’ve seen grave human rights abuses in the hands of local sheriffs or county officials”.