Biden-Harris Administration Must Tackle Immigrant Prisons Next

WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Biden signed an executive order today directing the Justice Department to stop renewing contracts with private prison companies. Regrettably, the order excludes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. The following statement is from Laura Rivera, immigration attorney for the SPLC Action Fund and director of the SPLC’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative.

“Eliminating the use of private prisons is an important step in the direction toward racial equity. It’s wrong to profit from the imprisonment of people, which is why it’s unacceptable for the Biden-Harris administration to exclude immigrant prisons from today’s executive order. The government spends billions of dollars annually to detain immigrants, and more than 80 percent of the people in ICE custody are in private prisons. And at hundreds of dollars a day, per person, the detention of immigrants is among the biggest ‘growth areas’ for private prison companies.

“The very concept of detaining immigrants is rotten to its core and private prison companies like CoreCivic, Geo Group and LaSalle Corrections have profited immensely off the backs of the immigrants languishing in their sordid prisons. Even amid the pandemic, more than 14,000 immigrants remain behind bars with inadequate COVID testing and PPE, and where it is impossible to socially distance. The profit incentive to keep people detained cost the lives of Cipriano Chavez-Alvarez, Jose Guillen-Vega and Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, who all died of COVID while in ICE custody at the CoreCivic-operated Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. 

“ICE detention is designed to dehumanize and to profit off of predominantly Black, Brown and Indigenous people. And it’s clear that private prison companies have created perverse incentives to incarcerate as many immigrants as possible, for as long as possible. What’s more, ICE’s history of impunity has allowed the private prison companies ICE contracts with to escape accountability and public oversight. This is an irredeemable, profit-driven racket that the Biden-Harris administration must address. 

“As a candidate, President Biden promised that the end of private prisons would include the end of private detention of undocumented people. The Biden-Harris administration must make good on that promise without further delay.”