Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration

In the last three years, the Trump administration has grown the immigration detention system in the United States to an unprecedented size, at times holding more than 56,000 people per day. Since 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has anchored this growth in places where immigrants are most likely to be isolated from legal counsel, remain in detention without real opportunity for release, and are more likely to lose their cases. These new detention centers also exhibit patterns of mistreatment and abuse, including medical and mental health care neglect, that have been present since the inception of ICE’s detention system and grown worse as the system has expanded. When ICE was created in 2003, it inherited an immigration detention system that held about 20,000 people per day.1 The immigration detention system has since grown to a sprawling network of more than 200 detention centers nationwide. These facilities range in size and are largely operated by private prison corporations and, in some cases, by local jails. ICE uses these facilities to lock up people who arrive at the border or airports and request asylum, as well as long-time community members who are facing removal because of allegations of criminal conduct or simply because they are undocumented. This report provides a comprehensive examination of changes to the immigration detention system under the Trump administration, including an in-depth examination of the system’s expansion in the last three years and conditions of confinement in new detention facilities opened after January 2017. When this report went to print in April 2020, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic had taken hold in the United States. While our findings do not account for conditions in the detention system during the pandemic, they do document the state of a system that was never prepared to safely handle the crisis situation the world now faces. The following findings were particularly concerning in light of the COVID-19 outbreak: • We observed understaffing and cost-cutting measures in medical units which appeared dangerously unprepared for emergencies, posing danger to the health of people in detention even under ordinary circumstances; • We heard stories of immigrants’ lack of access to proper hygiene and witnessed unsanitary conditions in living units, many of which contained beds, dining, and restroom facilities for up to nearly 100 people all in one room. • Asylum seekers described virtually impossible odds for receiving release from detention on parole, an important legal mechanism ICE should be more eager to deploy to draw down its detention population in the face of a health crisis

Behind Closed Doors: Abuse and Retaliation Against Hunger Strikers in U.S. Immigration Detention

The decision to begin a hunger strike in immigration detention is not taken lightly. A detained person's refusal to eat may be the last option available to voice complaint, after all other methods of petition have failed. Detained and imprisoned people worldwide have engaged in hunger strikes to plead for humane conditions of confinement or release from captivity and to bring attention to broader calls for justice.Each day, the United States government unnecessarily locks up thousands of people in civil immigration detention, including children, in over two hundred immigration detention centers around the country.People may be locked up for many months — even years — as they await final adjudication of their cases or deportation. Trapped in a system marked by mistreatment and abuse, medical neglect, and the denial of due process, hundreds of people in immigration detention engage in hunger strikes as a means of protest each year. ICE's failure to provide safe and humane conditions in detention during the COVID-19 pandemic has only raised the stakes for detained people. Although some detained people, on occasion, are able to bring outside attention to their hunger strikes, very little is known of ICE's systemic response to hunger striking detainees.This report provides for the first time an in-depth, nationwide examination of what happens to people who engage in hunger strikes while detained by ICE

Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration

In the last three years, the Trump administration has grown the immigration detention system in the United States to an unprecedented size, at times holding more than 56,000 people per day. Since 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has anchored this growth in places where immigrants are most likely to be isolated from legal counsel, remain in detention without real opportunity for release, and are more likely to lose their cases. These new detention centers also exhibit patterns of mistreatment and abuse, including medical and mental health care neglect, that have been present since the inception of ICE’s detention system and grown worse as the system has expanded. When ICE was created in 2003, it inherited an immigration detention system that held about 20,000 people per day.1 The immigration detention system has since grown to a sprawling network of more than 200 detention centers nationwide. These facilities range in size and are largely operated by private prison corporations and, in some cases, by local jails. ICE uses these facilities to lock up people who arrive at the border or airports and request asylum, as well as long-time community members who are facing removal because of allegations of criminal conduct or simply because they are undocumented. This report provides a comprehensive examination of changes to the immigration detention system under the Trump administration, including an in-depth examination of the system’s expansion in the last three years and conditions of confinement in new detention facilities opened after January 2017. When this report went to print in April 2020, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic had taken hold in the United States. While our findings do not account for conditions in the detention system during the pandemic, they do document the state of a system that was never prepared to safely handle the crisis situation the world now faces. The following findings were particularly concerning in light of the COVID-19 outbreak: • We observed understaffing and cost-cutting measures in medical units which appeared dangerously unprepared for emergencies, posing danger to the health of people in detention even under ordinary circumstances; • We heard stories of immigrants’ lack of access to proper hygiene and witnessed unsanitary conditions in living units, many of which contained beds, dining, and restroom facilities for up to nearly 100 people all in one room. • Asylum seekers described virtually impossible odds for receiving release from detention on parole, an important legal mechanism ICE should be more eager to deploy to draw down its detention population in the face of a health crisis

Hollow Victories: The Crisis in Collecting Unpaid Wages for California's Workers

This report exposes a surprising, but unfortunately common problem facing low-wage workers in California and nationwide. Workers whose employers have failed to pay them face serious challenges in recovering their hard-earned wages — even after state authorities have found in the workers’ favor and have issued a legally binding judgment ordering employers to pay. To a worker who has lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, winning a judgment is often at best a hollow victory. Non-payment or underpayment of wages, moreover, remains rampant nationwide. As a landmark survey of low-wage workers found in 2008, 26 percent of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage in the prior week; 76 percent of those who worked more than 40 hours were not paid the legally required overtime rate. More than two-thirds of low-wage workers have experienced at least one payrelated violation in the previous work week—leading workers to lose an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations

Hollow Victories: The Crisis in Collecting Unpaid Wages for California's Workers

This report exposes a surprising, but unfortunately common problem facing low-wage workers in California and nationwide. Workers whose employers have failed to pay them face serious challenges in recovering their hard-earned wages — even after state authorities have found in the workers’ favor and have issued a legally binding judgment ordering employers to pay. To a worker who has lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, winning a judgment is often at best a hollow victory. Non-payment or underpayment of wages, moreover, remains rampant nationwide. As a landmark survey of low-wage workers found in 2008, 26 percent of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage in the prior week; 76 percent of those who worked more than 40 hours were not paid the legally required overtime rate. More than two-thirds of low-wage workers have experienced at least one payrelated violation in the previous work week—leading workers to lose an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations

No Fighting Chance: ICE's Denial of Access to Counsel in U.S. Immigration Detention Centers

This ACLU research report provides the first comprehensive study of the barriers to access to counsel in U.S. immigration detention centers nationwide. Based on attorney surveys and calls to all immigration detention facilities nationwide, this report documents how ICE has systematically restricted the most basic modes of communication that detained people need to connect with legal counsel and the outside world. The report documents the many barriers that detained people face to communicate with counsel via telephone, video calls, mail, and in-person visits. It concludes with key recommendations for Congress and DHS to address these issues, and the crisis of detention more broadly