If President Donald Trump’s administration has a way, the ability of more immigrants will soon be added nationwide as the U.S. seeks an explosive expansion of already the world’s largest immigration detention system.
The efforts of mass deportation that Trump promised during his 2024 campaign represent a potential scam for private prison companies and a challenge to government agencies responsible for orderly deportation of immigrants. Some critics say the government’s plan also includes intentional attempts to isolate the detainees and keep court proceedings away from their lawyers and support systems.
Todd Lyons, acting director of immigration and customs enforcement agencies, said at a border security conference in Phoenix last week that the agency needs to “treat the business as better as a business” and suggested that the country’s deportation system could operate like Amazon, such as Amazon, trying to deliver your product within 24 hours. ”
“So, trying to figure out how to do this with humans and trying to make them achieve this almost globally, it’s really ours for us,” Lyon said.
ICE has taken steps to increase immigration beds this month, and ICE invites companies to bid for contracts to operate detention centers at detention centers across the country, up to $45 billion as the agency begins to expand from its current budget to 41,000-bed budget to 100,000 beds.
The money has not been paid yet, but the contract has been awarded. The House narrowly approved a broad spending bill that includes $175 billion in immigration enforcement, about 22 times the annual budget of the ICE. The agency currently has about 46,000 people in more than 100 detention centers nationwide, causing overcrowding in places including Miami.
ICE last week awarded a contract worth up to $3.85 billion to deploy Resources LLC to run an internment camp at Fort Bliss Army Base, Texas. The lesser-known company is moving its business from Border Patrol tent camps to people arriving in the United States (mostly closed now) to ice facilities for people who have been deported.
Geo Group Inc. signed a 1,000-bed contract worth $1 billion in Newark, New Jersey, and in 15 years, it won a 1,800-bed contract at Baldwin, Michigan. Corecivic Inc. won a contract to have 2,400 people in a toddler family in Dilley, Texas for five years.
The stock market rewards these two private correction companies. Geo’s stock price has soared 94% since Trump’s election. Corecivic shares soared 62%.
Louisiana ranks second in the country in immigration detention spaces, with relatively few spaces, immigrants and not bordering, which does not seem to be an obvious choice for establishing an immigration detention center. But at the end of the past decade, things have come together, and in 2019 alone, ICE can take over five former criminal prisons in the state.
Now, the state is second only to Texas, with the number of beds it provides for detained immigrants. ICE is attracted by relatively low labor costs, a generally favorable political environment and the ready-made portion of the recently emptied prison supply.
State laws in 2017 lowered criminal penalties and reduced demand for prisons and prison beds. In rural areas, correctional facilities are often the main driver of the local economy, and officials are eager to sign contracts for immigration detention.
“Since Louisiana is the highest incarcerator in the world, it’s not that you seem to have local lawmakers against prisons or oppose letting for-profit prison industrial complexes come in and actually make sure those complexes continue to operate,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU.
Mary Yanik, a professor and co-director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at the Louisiana Immigration Prison, said it was more difficult to challenge detention conditions or appeal an Immigration Court ruling for people in Louisiana Immigration Prison, who challenged detention conditions or appealed to an Immigration Court ruling.
“Fundamentally, Ice can choose to hear the courts that hear their cases by finding a detention center in a specific location,” she said.
Detention centers are usually hours away from the city, and nine immigration detention centers in Louisiana are located in the northern or western regions of the state. This means driving for hours from the largest city, where immigration advocates and lawyers are gathered. Detainees have long complained about isolation.
Detention in “tragic conditions” and quarantine from family and supporting the network and supporting the network may lead to more ease of deportation from ICE, said Carly Pérez Fernández, a spokesman for the Detention Watch Network.
“Detention does play a crucial role in making Trump’s cruel mass deportation agenda,” she said. “Increased detention capacity will exacerbate the inhuman conditions of detention we already know.”
Most detention centers are relatively short from Alexander, where ice transforms the former military base into a 400-bed short-term holding center with adjacent air force plates for deportation.
A facility is located in Jena, where 4,200 people are located, about 220 miles (355 km) from New Orleans. There is only one advertising hotel in the community called Townsmen Inn.
The Jena Detention Center operates contract with the Geo Group, surrounded by “non-invasion” signs, and fences are surrounded by razors and armed guards.
Homero Lopez, an attorney who provides free representation in immigration services and legal advocacy at the Louisiana Detention Center, said the distant locations “make protests and organizing more difficult.”
The video links introduced to the immigration court have mitigated (but not eliminated) criticism that ICE intentionally attempted to dismantle detainees with family, lawyers and other forms of support.
Lopez said he would be happy to use video conferencing for quick preliminary questions, but he would rather let the motivation appear in person for a substantive hearing. He said video links could be “dehumanized” and could cause judges not to appreciate everything they encounter when they don’t face immigration.
