Rep. Omar Leads Letter Urging Executive Action on ICE Detention

March 15, 2021

Susan Rice

Director

Domestic Policy Council

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Alejandro Mayorkas

Secretary

Department of Homeland Security

1180 2nd Street SW

Washington, DC 20024

Dear Director Rice and Secretary Mayorkas:

We applaud the Biden Administration's commitment to addressing racial injustice and systemic inequity by working to sever the link between incarceration and profit. The Biden Administration has already taken an important step toward this end via the "Executive Order on Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities," released on January 26, 2021,^[1] which instructed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to phase out its use of private prisons by requiring the Attorney General not to renew contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. We support the calls from more than 70 Congressional offices to expand this Executive Order to incorporate privately operated immigration detention facilities under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).^[2]However, privately operated immigration detention facilities are not the only instance in which financial incentives fuel needless expansion of immigration detention. We urge the Biden administration to release an additional Executive Order announcing a plan to phase out contracts between ICE and state, county, and local jails and prisons.

ICE operates a sprawling network of more than 200 detention facilities.^[3] The majority of these facilities operate through contracts between ICE (or, less commonly, the U.S. Marshals Service – USMS) and localities for the purposes of detaining immigrants. According to a 2019 report by the Brooking Institute, 49% of people in ICE detention were held in facilities owned by counties and 14% in facilities owned by cities and municipalities.^[4] In some cases, localitiessubsequently sub-contract services for operating detention facilities to private prison companies. In other instances, localities reserve space in local, county, or state jails and prisons for the purposes of detaining immigrants. In all cases, localities are financially incentivized to detain immigrants.

In many instances, ICE will offer localities a per diem rate to detain immigrants that is substantially higher than the per diem rate offered by state Departments of Corrections to detain people held in criminal custody. For example, as of October 2019, the per diem rate offered by ICE to sheriffs offices in Louisiana is approximately $65^[5], while the average per diem rate paid to Louisiana sheriffs departments to jail people serving criminal sentences ranges from $10.25 to $24.39.^[6] This financial incentive has fueled the expansion of immigration detention throughout the country, including in states such as Louisiana, which successfully reduced criminal incarceration levels, only to re-fill those same beds with immigrants.^[7] Profit incentives to reduce one form of incarceration at the expense of expanding another come at particular cost to Black and Brown immigrants, who are doubly vulnerable to aggressive surveillance and incarceration in the context of both criminal justice and civil immigration enforcement.

Conditions in municipal, county, and state jails and prisons contracting with ICE to detain immigrants mirror the systemic abuses in privately operated immigration detention facilities, including medical neglect, long term use of solitary confinement, sexual assault, and lack of access to legal counsel.^[8] In some instances, people detained on civil immigration charges in jails and prisons operated by localities lack access to basic services more regularly available in large, privately operated facilities, as smaller facilities are not designed for long-term confinement. Just as in privately operated facilities, immigration detention centers operated by localities also obstruct meaningful oversight.^[9]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the most egregious examples of medical neglect and failure to follow public health protocols occurred in locally operated jails and prisons. This includes the Morrow County Jail in Ohio, in which 100% of all immigrants tested positive for COVID-19, after county officials used expired thermometers to conduct temperature checks and failed to implement even basic medical quarantining procedures.^[10] Some of the worst examples of abuse and retaliation against detained immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic also occurred in jails and prisons operated by localities, including an incident at the Bristol County jail in Massachusetts in which the Sheriff's office unleashed dogs and pepper spray against detained immigrants, resulting in at least two hospitalizations.^[11]

In order to truly sever the financial incentives causing the expansion of an unnecessary and abuse-ridden system of mass incarceration, we urge you to end contracts between the federal government and localities for the purposes of immigration detention. At a historic moment where immigration detention levels are at their lowest in a generation, now is the time to act to rein in a system of detention built on a disproven myth that immigrants fail to appear in court.^[12] Indeed, several states, including California^[13], New Jersey^[14], and Maryland^[15], have already taken steps to phase out both public and private detention. The federal government should follow suit.

We urge the Biden-Harris administration to immediately enact an additional Executive Order to phase out contracts or agreements between ICE and/or the USMS with states, counties, and municipalities for the purposes of immigration detention.

Sincerely,

Ilhan Omar

Member of Congress

Additional signers

Representative Jamaal Bowman, Ed. D.

Representative Cori Bush

Representative André Carson

Representative Gerald E. Connolly

Representative Jim Cooper

Representative Jesús G. "Chuy" García

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva

Representative Adriano Espaillat

Representative Pramila Jayapal

Representative Barbara Lee

Representative Alan Lowenthal

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney

Representative James P. McGovern

Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Representative Mark Pocan

Representative Ayanna Pressley

Representative Jan Schakowsky

Representative Rashida Tlaib

Representative Ritchie Torres

Representative Nydia M. Velázquez

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman