End Contracts Between ICE and Private Companies that Own Immigration Detention Centers
For delivery to: President of the United States, Joe Biden
Created by DREAM Activist
Categorized as Detention
**Mr. President, we call on you to:
Fulfill your campaign pledge to “make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants” by issuing an executive order to end contract with Private Companies that own Immigration Detention Centers in the United States.**
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On January 26, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order [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/] reinstating and expanding the Obama administration’s pledge [https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/cruel-inhuman-and-degrading-conditions/justice-departments-call-axe-private] to end the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ contracts with private prison companies, but it left out one of the most significant areas of the federal government’s use of private prison companies: immigration detention.
In four years, the Trump administration opened more than 40 new detention facilities and expanded the number of people in the system by approximately 50 percent. At this time last year, more than 81 percent of immigrants in detention were held in facilities owned or operated by private prison companies, a record high.
Privatized prisons, jails and detention centers provide an inherent financial incentive to lock people up and prioritize profits over safety. Governments that rely on private prisons incarcerate people for longer periods of time. A [2016 report] (https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/e1606.pdf) by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General condemned the failure of private prison companies to meet basic standards to provide for the health and safety of people in their custody.
- Contract facilities run by for-profit prison corporations operate outside the purview of public oversight and accountability. With no one to hold them accountable, private companies, which are incentivized to cut medical staffing and deny care to maximize shareholder return, have maintained a particularly grisly track record of detainee abuse, neglect and death.
- Profiteering should have no place in any detention system. It is well past time for DHS to END the contracts
**TAKE ACTION NOW. SIGN THE PETITION.**
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