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Private immigration prisons are a wasteland of human rights abuses, and of federal dollars [1]
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Date: 2022-07-13
Other immigration detention facilities across the nation are also getting big bucks despite detaining significantly fewer people. Just this week we noted that the privately operated Immigration Centers of America (ICA) in Virginia is now under court order to operate at roughly 25% detention capacity after creating a public health disaster in the summer of 2020 and getting most of the place sick with COVID-19.
Immigrant rights advocates say ICA is currently detaining just 12 people, “down from an average of well over 700 prior to the beginning of the pandemic.”
Now, one response to ICA and Adelanto could be, “Shouldn’t we try to be using all those beds, if we’re paying for them anyway?” Hell no, we should be terminating those contracts outright, and now is the time to do it, advocates say. “Closing the facility would not result in a major disruption of operations,” more than 100 state and national groups said in urging ICA’s closure in December.
“The average cost of a detention bed was $144 each day during the last fiscal year, the documents show,” the Associated Press reported. Even if all beds were being used, the federal government’s continued use of private immigration prisons runs antithetical to President Joe Biden’s “commitment to a fair and humane immigration system.” In addition to getting nearly all of its detainees sick, ICA “has long forced detained immigrants to endure terrible conditions including excessive use of force, solitary confinement, and limited access to counsel and family members,” advocates said.
Adelanto, meanwhile, has poisoned detained people through the misuse of a toxic pesticide, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said following a months-long investigation. While both staff and detained immigrants at Adelanto were forced by GEO Group to administer the toxic pesticide as an apparent disinfectant, investigators said only one group received the bare minimum of protective equipment. It’s not difficult to figure out which one.
Adelanto is also deadly, in 2017 seeing three deaths in the span of three months. In 2015, lawmakers “cited the 2012 death of Fernando Dominguez at the facility, saying it was the result of ‘egregious errors’ by the center's medical staff, who did not give him proper medical examinations or allow him to receive timely off-site treatment,” Mother Jones has previously reported. Advocates said that at ICA, a man died in 2011 “due to the facility’s failure to properly provide a medical screening and delays in referring him to appropriate medical care.”
These private prisons are not just a wasteland of federal dollars, they are a wasteland of human rights abuses. While the Biden administration in January 2021 ordered the Justice Department to not renew private prison contracts, that has not extended to private immigration prisons. But it still has the chance to correct this wrong, and it can begin by ending use of these two facilities.
“Cancelling this contract will not only put an end to ICA-Farmville’s long record of abuse, but it will also exemplify the Biden administration’s commitment to fulfilling its promises of fair and humane treatment of immigrants across the nation,” organizations said last year. “The government is still paying [GEO Group] to keep [Adelanto] open,” Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice deportation Defense Director Lizbeth Abeln told the Associated Press. “It’s really concerning they’re still getting paid for all the beds every single day. It’s empty.”
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'Long record of abuse': Over 100 groups call on Biden admin to terminate Farmville's ICE contract
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