Washington, DC - Reflecting on the first six months of Trump’s second term, Silky Shah, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, shared the following:
“Over the past six months, Trump’s weaponization of immigration detention to expand his authoritarian strategies has made clear that this cruel, abusive system never should have existed in the first place. For decades, politicians across the political spectrum have sold us a lie that immigration is a public safety issue, but the reality is that when you accept the premise that some people are deserving of incarceration, detention, or deportation, the scope of who is eligible is always under the threat of expanding. Now, communities across the country are watching daily as their family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors are being violently targeted and disappeared by ICE, many to detention facilities notorious for abuse and neglect, and some to other countries where they have no connection. Deporting people to third countries is one of the many alarming strategies of the administration that must be condemned and cannot be normalized. People across the country see this cruelty for what it is - rising authoritarianism - and are organizing en masse to keep ICE out of their communities.
In just six months under Trump, the number of people in detention has leapt to nearly 60,000, the highest number in history. Trump has proliferated ICE operations into other government agencies, including the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense, using military bases as deportation hubs and growing ICE partnerships with local sheriffs and county jails. The administration has expanded surveillance, brought back family detention, incarcerated people in an abusive mega-prison in El Salvador, and increased neighborhood and workplace raids that destabilize communities and disappear people, including activists who oppose Trump’s agenda. People are then funneled into ICE’s network of private prisons, county jails, state and federal prisons, and makeshift detention camps, often sowing fear and confusion with facility transfers. Just last week, the regime announced plans to resume and expand third country deportations, and declared that millions of immigrants are ineligible for a bond hearing, denying undocumented immigrants due process rights and opening the door to them being detained indefinitely.
Trump's cruel mass detention expansion is exacerbating inhumane conditions, with increasing reports of death, medical neglect, overcrowding, lack of food, and rampant transfers that cut people off from their loved ones and support networks. Now that Congress has passed the MAGA-backed megabill, Trump will have unprecedented resources to enact his cruel mass detention and deportation agenda. The bill provides a shocking $150 billion for the targeting, detention, and deportation of people, including $45 billion for ICE to detain families and adults over the next four years at the expense of vital programs for all Americans. Shockingly, ICE’s budget now exceeds many militaries around the world.
Detention facilitates deportation, and expanding detention is key to Trump carrying out his mass deportation agenda. Advocates across the country have fought to shut down facilities in their communities and block the opening of new ones, and we can do it again. Nationwide protests have once again illuminated that people do not want ICE agents and detention centers in their communities. Immigrants are vital contributors to local communities – neighbors, friends, coworkers, caretakers and more.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.