Pressroom

Washington, DC and New York, NY —Today, Detention Watch Network (DWN) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released a new report, Banking on Detention 2016 Update, that reveals for the first time that mothers and their children are jailed under guaranteed minimum bed contracts for local jails. The report shows the extent to which ICE grants financial benefits to private and public entities that detain immigrants through government contracts requiring ICE to pay for a set number of beds at detention facilities, rendering immigrants, including children and families, a source of profit…

WASHINGTON, DC — In response to the confirmed reports of a 30 day “surge” of raids to take place across the country, Danny Cendejas, Organizing Director at Detention Watch Network made the following statement: “With this latest announcement President Obama is cementing his legacy as a fallible leader who did not uphold the basic rights of society’s most vulnerable populations - asylum seeking women and children. Primarily targeted at Central American families, President Obama continues to deny the United States’ direct hand in creating violent and unstable conditions prevailing in the region…

WASHINGTON, DC — Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) announced an inspection program aimed at holding accountable two agencies who have long skirted their responsibility to meaningfully care for the well-being of immigrants in their custody: Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The new program promises unannounced inspections designed to monitor the Department of Homeland Security’s compliance with official government health, safety, and detention standards. This initiative is a direct result of…

WASHINGTON, DC — A report, Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention, released today by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Detention Watch Network (DWN) and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), examines egregious violations of medical standards by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that played a significant role in the deaths of eight people in detention centers across the country. During the Obama administration, 56 individuals have died while in ICE custody. This report focuses on eight deaths during a three-year period (2010 to 2012). Based on…

WASHINGTON, DC — On Monday, President Obama released the final budget of his presidency. In a disappointing proposal, this year’s budget continues to significantly invest in detention and monitoring of immigrant communities, earmarking $2.18 billion for detention. The budget requests funding for 30,913 people to be detained each day down from 34,040 last year. “While this is a reduction in funding for custody operations, it is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed,” said Silky Shah, co-director for Detention Watch Network. “The numbers remain alarmingly high, which will result in…

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — A new report, “Abuse in Adelanto: An Investigation into a California Town’s Immigration Jail” released today by Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) and the Detention Watch Network (DWN) documents the extreme dangers detained immigrants face at the Adelanto Immigration Detention Facility — a for-profit facility where medical abuses run rampant and two high profile deaths have occurred. The report raises specific concerns about the treatment of people with disabilities incarcerated at the facility — with one man in a wheelchair denied…

WASHINGTON, DC — A new report, “Lives in Peril: How Ineffective Inspections Make ICE Complicit in Immigration Detention Abuse” released today by the National Immigration Justice Center (NIJC) and Detention Watch Network (DWN), exposes how the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inspections process for immigration detention centers obscures and perpetuates widespread abuses of detained immigrants. View the report here The report draws on information from ICE inspections documents for 105 immigration detention facilities and features focused analyses of inspections for detention…

WASHINGTON, DC — A new report, “Banking on Detention: Local Lockup Quotas and the Immigrant Dragnet” released today by Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights explores and exposes the depth of local lockup quotas in immigrant detention across 15 facilities in half of ICE’s field offices under the Obama Administration. Major areas with local quotas include: Los Angeles, San Antonio, Phoenix, Miami, Seattle, Houston, San Diego, Buffalo, New Orleans, and Newark. “For the federal government to contractually guarantee a certain number of immigrant detainees per day violates…