Regardless of a marketing campaign pledge that he would “clarify that the federal authorities mustn’t use non-public services for any detention, together with detention of undocumented immigrants,” Tashman notes President Biden’s administration has sought new agreements with grasping, abusive non-public jail firms.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already began contracting with one non-public facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania and should quickly enter contracts with for-profit, non-public prisons in Leavenworth, Kansas and Mason, Tennessee,” he writes. “There are even indicators that ICE could increase a non-public immigrant detention middle run by the for-profit GEO Group in Georgia, the very state the place the president promised voters that he deliberate to shut all non-public detention facilities.”
Tashman notes that Biden has reiterated his marketing campaign stance as president, telling immigrant rights advocates that “there ought to be no non-public prisons, interval, none, interval. Personal detention facilities, they need to not exist, and we’re working to shut all of them.” However whereas an government order within the first weeks of his administration ordered the Justice Division to section out the federal authorities’s use of personal prisons, it didn’t embrace ICE. That is massively consequential, as a result of the overwhelming majority of immigrants in ICE custody are jailed in non-public services.
“This loophole gave non-public jail firms an alternative to land new contracts and keep within the enterprise of incarcerating folks,” Tashman continued.
Relating to COVID-19, it’s Groundhog Day at immigration services operated by non-public jail profiteer CoreCivic particularly. That’s as a result of websites that beforehand skilled main—and lethal—outbreaks are as soon as once more changing into hotspots. However non-public jail firms actually don’t give one shit: like beforehand famous, when detained immigrants at one in every of CoreCivic’s websites in Arizona staged a peaceable protest to demand security measures in response to the pandemic, they bought assaulted by officers.
In Washington state, GEO Group was ordered to pay tens of millions as results of a lawsuit over its pressured labor practices. The corporate made immigrants detained on the Northwest ICE Processing Heart work for $1 a day (or typically nothing in any respect). However fairly than pay them their due wages, the filthy wealthy firm suspended the “voluntary” work program whereas it appealed the ruling. In December, the court docket rejected GEO Group’s try to scale back the settlement quantity. That is who the federal authorities contracts with, on our dime.
“The administration ought to take heed to the voters—and President Biden—and finish its misguided pursuit of recent detention contracts with for-profit, non-public jail firms,” Tashman mentioned. “It’s time to shut non-public prisons and shut down the immigrant detention machine infamous for COVID-19 surges, bodily brutality, sexual abuse, racist mistreatment, and denials of due course of, not increase it.”
