WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. authorities are transferring into federal prisons about 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, officials told Reuters on Thursday, in the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees amid a Trump administration crackdown on people entering the country illegally.
An ICE spokeswoman told Reuters five federal prisons will temporarily take in detainees awaiting civil immigration court hearings, including potential asylum seekers, with one prison in Victorville, California, preparing to house 1,000 people.
Officials of a prison employees’ union said the influx of ICE detainees, who were arrested at the border or elsewhere in the United States by immigration officials, raises questions about prison staffing and safety.
Union leaders at prisons in California, Texas and Washington state who spoke to Reuters said they had little time to prepare for the large intake of detainees.
At Victorville, the prison getting the largest number of people, workers are moving about 500 inmates in a medium-security facility to make space, said John Kostelnik, local president for the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals union.
“There is so much movement going on,” said Kostelnik. “Everyone is running around like a chicken without their head.”
In addition to Victorville, other prisons that have received or will receive detainees include ones in Washington state, Oregon, Arizona and Texas.
ICE spokeswoman Dani Bennett said ICE is “working to meet the demand for additional immigration detention space” due to a surge in illegal border crossings and a U.S. Department of Justice zero-tolerance policy.
“To meet this need, ICE is collaborating with the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), private detention facility operators and local government agencies,” she said in a statement to Reuters.
In April 2018, nearly 51,000 people were apprehended at or near the southern border, up from about 16,000 in the same month a year earlier.
A new agreement between ICE and the Justice Department makes about 1,600 prison beds available and is expected to last 120 days, giving ICE time to secure more space for detainees. It comes amid a crackdown by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on both illegal border crossings and people seeking asylum.
Recently, Sessions said the Justice Department planned to prosecute every person who crosses the border illegally and to separate migrant children from their parents.
President Donald Trump in the spring signed a memorandum ending “catch and release,” in which illegal immigrants were released from detention while awaiting court hearings.
According to ICE data, the average daily population of detainees in its facilities as of May 26 was 41,134, up from the 2017 daily average of 38,106.
Immigration advocates immediately decried the news of sending detainees to federal penitentiaries.
“Our federal prisons are set up to detain the worst of the worst. They should not be used for immigration purposes,” said Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.
“Federal prisons are for hardened criminals. They are not physically set up for immigrant landscapers looking for a job or fleeing violence,” Noorani said.
ICE detainees awaiting civil hearings in immigration courts are usually housed in ICE detention facilities or county jails.
Kevin Landy, a former ICE assistant director responsible for the Office of Detention Policy and Planning under the Obama administration, said the move to house so many detainees at once in federal prisons was “highly unusual” and raises oversight concerns.
“A large percent of ICE detainees have no criminal record and are more vulnerable in a prison setting – security staff and administrators at BOP facilities have spent their careers dealing with hardened criminals serving long sentences for serious felonies, and the procedures and staff training reflect that,” he said. “This sudden mass transfer could result in some serious problems.”
Kiss my Ice.
Well I gotta look at the brightside.
The price of widgets and Ashley furniture should go down.
Plus instead of paying inmates 25 cents a day.
They can pay them 24 cents a day.
That otta piss the Chinese off.
Wait until the prison industrial complex starts feeding them a fish head and a bowl of rice.
That will be a cost savings to you of…
Well…
Absolutely. Zero…
In fact prices will go up.
Rattt. Bassturds.
In today’s bio metric digital identification world they know who the real bad guys are once they’ve got their fingers prints and tattoo markings,their teeth impressions, the iris of the eye and especially dna even related family members i.d. on file. There is no escape. But the problem is they get inside our borders when it needs to be stopped with even more severe penalties.
Born on US soil does not help…too many dual citizens then abuse the welfare system…pregnant Chinese woman and Saudi women having babies here….
This is all BS, because according to a congressional statement, one of the possible uses for the FEMA camps that exist all over the country was to detain people illegally entering the country over the southern border.
During the baby Bush administration, $385 million was paid to Haliburton to have these camps stocked and ready for use.
There’s plenty of room to lock up the wetbacks, but they’re saving it for us instead. All of this “crackdown on the wetbacks” you’re seeing in the news is nonsense. It’s all just to convince the American people that Washington D.C. actually cares about what they want.
And again, 1,600, or even 16,000, means nothing when there’s 30,000,000 of them here.
“In addition to Victorville, other prisons that have received or will receive detainees include ones in Washington state, Oregon, Arizona and Texas.”
WE DON’T WANT THE SCUMBAGS HERE… SEND ‘EM BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM!!!!! 😡