Despite Campaign Promises, Immigrant Detentions Soar Under Biden

Although President Joe Biden campaigned on ending “prolonged” detention and use of private prisons for immigration detention, which house the majority of those in ICE custody, the number of detainees has more than doubled since the end of February, to nearly 27,000 as of July 22nd, beating out the roughly 22,000 detained last July under former-president Donald Trump, reports the Associated Press. And while the Biden administration terminated contracts with two controversial ICE detention centers in Georgia and Massachusetts, garnering praise from advocates who hoped it would be the start of a broader rollback, no other facilities have lost their ICE contracts, and Biden has proposed funding for 32,500 immigrant detention beds in his budget, a modest decrease from 34,000 funded by Trump.

The number of detainees who have passed their initial asylum screening has leaped from around 1,700 in April to 3,400 in late July, making up about 13 percent of all detainees, according to the most recent ICE data. Detention facilities such as Winn Prison in Louisiana, one of the nation’s largest ICE detention centers, and Bergen County Jail in New Jersey have drawn scrutiny and complaints from advocacy groups and detainees concerning poor sanitary conditions, medical neglect during the pandemic, abuse, racism and other mistreatment. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a recent congressional hearing that he’s “concerned about the overuse of detention” and pledged to continue to review problematic facilities. Meanwhile, immigration opponents argue that a more troubling trend than the rise in detentions is an apparent drop-off in ICE enforcement in cities and towns. As of last month, more than 80 percent of detainees had been apprehended by Border Patrol officials, and less than 20 percent by ICE agents.