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THREAD: Today the WH ordered DOJ to phase out contracts w/ private prisons. A landmark step, but incomplete. The EO covers “criminal detention facilities” but not immigration detention, an omission that's harmful & needs fixing now, not later 1/ https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/biden-private-immigration-detention-facilities-undocumented-462884
The EO calls out the “profit-based incentives” that push private prisons to incarcerate more people and cut corners on health and safety. Private prisons put lives at risk for profit. They put a price tag on freedom, whether they're DOJ or DHS. 2/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/26/executive-order-reforming-our-incarceration-system-to-eliminate-the-use-of-privately-operated-criminal-detention-facilities/
This EO echoes the Obama-era efforts to end BOP's private prison contracts. Within months ICE started scooping up BOP's private prison $$$. In 2018, Roxsana Hernandez died in ICE custody in a NM jail run by Core Civic, a facility vacated by BOP in 2016. 3/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/27/transgender-asylum-seeker-was-beaten-before-her-death-according-new-autopsy/
Then like now advocates called on the administration to be consistent and end all private prisons, including ICE's. DHS’s own Advisory Council considered the question. The Council’s draft report stuck with the status quo, but then…. 4/ (continued) https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DHS%20HSAC%20PIDF%20Final%20Report.pdf
At a public meeting, the vast majority of the Council adopted the report with footnote 14, that recommended a “measured but deliberate shift” away from ICE’s use of private prisons. Our @NIJC statement describing those 2016 events at the time: 5/ https://immigrantjustice.org/press-releases/homeland-security-advisory-council-rejects-notion-reliance-private-immigration
I gave testimony at the public meeting where the Council weighed how to advise on ICE's use of private prisons. The high stakes hung in the air. We begged the Council to remember that people were dying in ICE jails. Just like they still are today. 6/ https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/30/us/ice-deaths-detention-2020/index.html
About 70% of ICE’s detention system is owned or operated by private prison companies. 7/
These companies’ laser focus on maximizing profit + structural racism in U.S. institutions conspires to create the behemoth immigration detention system causing so much suffering today. 8/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2019/12/19/ice-asylum-under-trump-exclusive-look-us-immigration-detention/4381404002/
In September the House oversight committee issued a devastating report on the deaths, harm, and negligence rampant in ICE’s privately operated prisons. 9/ https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2020-09-24.%20Staff%20Report%20on%20ICE%20Contractors.pdf
President Biden’s campaign commitments on immigration included a clear promise to “end for-profit detention centers.” @JoeBiden: We hope to see this promise made reality soon in Friday’s next round of immigration policies. 11/ https://joebiden.com/immigration/
. @NIJC we stand with so many calling for an end to the immigration detention system. Ending private prisons should be the 1st step toward dismantling this system that is infected with racism & corruption. It can’t wait. #EndDetention 12&end/ https://immigrantjustice.org/research-items/policy-brief-5-reasons-end-immigrant-detention
