America’s private immigration detention industry is enjoying a surprise boost from the Biden administration and expecting a windfall from Donald Trump despite being skewered by watchdogs and critics for running civil detention centers with some “horrific” and even lethal conditions.
As a Guardian investigation revealed on Thursday, Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of people and expand private immigration prisons to hold them during that process is already getting a multi-billion dollar head start from Joe Biden’s continued tack to the right on immigration.
Despite widespread complaints about often horrific conditions in detention centers, the Biden administration has extended contracts with privately-run facilities under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), even as members of Congress, federal watchdogs and advocates pushed for their closure.
“Congress allocates over $3bn a year so the US government can maintain the largest immigration detention apparatus in the world,” said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
He lambasted standards in the system, saying: “Private contractors receive billions a year in federal dollars to provide Ice detention, transport, surveillance and deportations. People in detention experience inhumane conditions and rights abuses that include medical neglect, preventable deaths, punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of due process, and discriminatory and racist treatment.”
The number of people detained in Ice jails has risen steadily under Biden, from 14,195 to almost 39,000, driven by the loosening of pandemic restrictions at the US-Mexico border. Some heavily-criticized facilities have had their contracts extended.
Congress approved $3.4bn for fiscal year 2024 for Ice to detain 41,500 people per day, an increase from $2.9bn in 2023.
In 2024 so far, 10 people have died in Ice custody, according to a review of Ice press releases, nine of them in private sector centers. In 2023, 90% of people in Ice custody were held in privately-run facilities.
The Biden administration “will hand off the same system that Democrats and Republicans have always created”, said Austin Kocher, assistant research professor at Syracuse University, who studies the US’s immigration enforcement system.
In September, the Department of Homeland Security’s office of inspector general, one of the federal watchdogs that audits Ice facilities, released a report on 17 unannounced, spot inspections at Ice facilities dotted across the country, which were carried out from 2020 to 2023.
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It found a shortage of medical care, violations of sanitation standards, improper care in solitary confinement and problems with staff responses to detainees’ needs.
In May, a group of migrants’ rights organizations submitted a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security’s office of immigration detention ombudsman, a federal government office established to to assist individuals with complaints about violations of detention standards, regarding allegations of “problematic conditions” at the Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California.
This Ice facility is connected to the larger Adelanto Ice processing center, one of the biggest Ice jails in the country. Both facilities are owned and operated by GEO Group, the largest private prison company in the US.
The advocates’ letter cited troubling allegations, including a report that a detained person struggling with mental illness “was drinking shampoo and staying up all night”. Instead of providing mental health treatment, the letter says, Ice and GEO staff “kept moving him into different rooms”.
The advocates’ letter, written by the Stanford Law School immigrants’ rights clinic, the ACLU of Southern California, and the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition group, documented allegations that GEO and Ice “repeatedly” denied detained people access to their attorneys, refused to provide medical care and a lack of healthy food. Five days after the advocates submitted that letter, US senators, among them Democrats Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, submitted their own letter to DHS.
“We urge you to recommit to phasing out Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of private detention,” the letter reads, adding that despite Biden in 2021 ordering an end to federal use of private prisons, this policy “did not extend to immigration detention facilities, and Ice’s reliance on private detention has only increased since he took office.”
It urged the termination of contracts with several facilities the senators said had well-documented deficient conditions, including Adelanto.
But in October the Biden administration agreed to extend GEO’s contract for Desert View for five more years and Ice said the Adelanto facility’s contract was extended through December of this year.
In 2023, a scathing federal watchdog audit in Texas found that the solitary confinement unit at the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, run by private corrections company Akima Global Services, was “unsafe and unsanitary”. It was condemned but instead of closing it, Ice extended the contract with Akima and, this February, began searching for contractors to demolish the solitary unit and design and build a new one.
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In other examples, DHS ended its contract in 2021 with the Irwin county detention center, a private immigration jail in Ocilla, Georgia, run by LaSalle Corrections, that faced grave allegations that detained women were being subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies. But Ice simply began transferring women to the CoreCivic-operated Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, one of the deadliest immigration jails in the country with a long history of allegations of abuse. In 2022, five women alleged that a male nurse there, employed by CoreCivic, had sexually assaulted them.
When Biden issued an executive order to phase out the use of private prisons, one federal prison run by GEO Group in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, Moshannon Valley correctional center, was initially closed. But months later it was converted into a GEO immigration detention facility with 1,000-plus beds.
“That was a really huge blow and really showed the direction that this administration was taking with regards to detention [and] the power of these private prison contractors, too. When they lost their BOP [Bureau of Prisons] contracts, they just put their eyes back on Ice,” said Franzblau, the policy analyst, who tracks and reviews Ice contracts with federal contractors.
Two years later, researchers with various advocacy organizations interviewed detainees at Moshannon and published a report alleging that detainees were detained under “punitive, inhumane, and dangerous conditions”.
New Jersey, meanwhile, has seen the Biden administration side with the private sector in an ongoing legal battle to keep open the Elizabeth Contract detention center near the Newark airport in the face of the Democratic state’s ban on the use of private facilities to detain immigrants. The state argues that private detention facilities “threaten the public health” but CoreCivic and GEO are under consideration for more federal work to expand detention space by another 600 beds.
According to other court records, GEO aims to sign a contract with Ice for the additional beds at the nearby Delaney Hall Center.
In June, Senator Booker wrote a letter to DHS and Ice opposing the looming 15-year Ice contract for Delaney Hall, saying: “Reports have shown that people detained in privately-owned and operated immigration detention centers are often subjected to horrific conditions. At facilities owned and operated by GEO, immigrants routinely report experiencing violence, medical neglect, sexual abuse, malnourishment, poor living conditions, and retaliation when they try to report these abuses.” Booker cited a man dying at a GEO-run Ice detention in Washington state this spring after being in solitary confinement for at least 811 days.
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In a statement to the Guardian, Booker also said: “The Delaney Hall facility directly contradicts the will of New Jerseyans while lining the pockets of for-profit detention companies with long records of abusing and mistreating detained people.”
Of the for-profit companies, only CoreCivic responded to detailed requests for comment , with a statement that its facilities are safe and humane.
Here are other facilities that have had their federal contracts extended or modified this year, and the scrutiny they have faced:
Torrance county detention facility, Estancia, New Mexico, run by CoreCivic. In 2022, a DHS OIG inspection found conditions in the facilities to be so egregious, that the office issued a management alert, pressing for the relocation of all detainees “unless and until the facility ensures adequate staffing and appropriate living conditions”. In a statement, CoreCivic said the DHS OIG report was “deeply flawed” and it accused the watchdog body of “staging photos” to negatively misrepresent the facility. The government extended Torrance’s contract, currently through the end of December.
Krome North service processing center, Miami, Florida, run by Akima Global Services. In 2021, DHS’s office of civil rights and civil liberties launched an investigation into allegations including a lack of medical and mental healthcare and poor environmental conditions. Then DHS OIG published a report documenting guards’ unnecessary use of force on migrants. In October, Ice extended Akima’s contract through February 2025.
Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center on the Guantánamo navy base, temporarily being run jointly by MVM Inc and Akima Infrastructure Protection. The secretive immigrant detention facility does not appear in public government reports. Details have only recently surfaced, including about alarming conditions. The Ice facility is mostly used to detain a small number of people from the Caribbean, who were intercepted at sea. Other information is scarce but a 2023 internal DHS review recommending they stop detaining children there. This year, Ice granted Akima a $163.4m contract to run the center and extended MVM Inc’s contract through the end of the year. MVM directed questions to the government, also saying it will continue to provide services at the facility through the end of the year.
Farmville detention center in Virginia, run by Abyon LLC, an affiliate company of Immigration Centers of America. The new facility contract was renewed in March 2024. Democratic senators wrote urging DHS to end the contract over advocates’ allegations of “brutality, abuse and neglect”.
Winn correctional center, Winnfield, Louisiana, run by LaSalle Corrections. For years, the facility has been plagued with allegations of abuse, and the DHS civil rights watchdog urged its suspension or closure in 2021 and was further investigating this year, amid more complaints. Ice has extended LaSalle’s contract.
Buffalo (Batavia) service processing center in New York, run by Akima Global Services. Amid watchdog investigations over hygiene, Ice is seeking a new contractor for when Akima’s contract runs out in January.
South Texas Ice processing center in Pearsall, run by GEO Group. The OIG found standards violations during a 2022 inspection “that compromised the health, safety, and rights of detainees”. GEO’s contract currently runs until next August and terms were modified this fall to hire more guards.
As Booker’s June letter reminds his own president: “As a presidential candidate, President Biden was well-aware of the documented abuses in private detention facilities…[and] then candidate Biden promised to “make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants”.
Then, in a last, polite plea that, with less than two months left in office, Biden shows no sign of heeding, Booker adds: “The percentage of Ice detainees held in private detention centers is still unacceptably high and we must reverse this trend.”
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