Reports & Other Publications

The Biden administration has failed to deliver on the promise to end the use of private prisons in federal incarceration and immigration detention, according to Broken Promises: Limits of Biden's Executive Order on Private Prisons a new report released by Detention Watch Network and Project South. The report provides an overview of progress towards that unfulfilled promise, explores a troubling trend of detention expansion, and outlines the steps the administration must take to end the federal use of private prisons and phase out the use of immigration detention entirely.

Descargar el resumen ejecutivo como PDF:  Promesas Rotas: Límites de la Orden Ejecutiva de Biden Sobre Prisiones Privadas

“First Ten to Communities Not Cages” campaign is demanding the shut down of 10 immigration detention facilities in the first year of the Biden administration. The ‘First Ten’ detention centers are emblematic of how the immigration detention system as a whole is inherently abusive, unjust and fatally flawed beyond repair.

Descargar como PDF: Los Primeros Dies de Comunidades Si, Jaulas No

Under ordinary circumstances, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has proven to be deadly for the people detained at the agency’s network of over 200 jails and detention centers across the country. Now facing a global health crisis, ICE’s shameful record of medical negligence, limited and rotten food provisions, poor sanitation, and demonstrated inability to properly respond to past infectious disease outbreaks means that there is a serious risk of COVID-19 outbreaks at immigration detention centers.

Descargar como PDF: Cortejando catástrofe: cómo ICE está arriesgando las vidas de inmigrantes durante una pandemia global

A Toxic Relationship: Private Prisons and U.S. Immigration Detention, builds on the overwhelming evidence that the privatization of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention exacerbates due process violations, egregious conditions and transparency concerns that are endemic to the immigration detention system. In addition, the report amplifies the experiences of 42 individuals who were or are held in privately-run detention centers.

This report examines egregious violations of medical standards by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that played a significant role in the deaths of people in detention centers across the country. The report focuses on eight deaths during a three-year period (2010 to 2012). Based on documentation from ICE investigations conducted after each death, which the ACLU received through a Freedom of Information Act request, the report shows that violations of ICE’s medical standards contributed to the deaths. More perniciously, additional research shows that ICE inspections of the detention facilities before and after these deaths failed to acknowledge — or sometimes dismissed — the substandard medical care.

Descargar como PDF: Negligencia Mortal: El ICE pasa por alto las muertes en el sistema de detención

This report exposes how Immigration Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) inspections process for immigration detention obscures and perpetuates widespread abuses of detained immigrants. The lack of accountability for the operators and service-providers of immigration detention facilities has led to egregious conditions, medically negligent deaths, and abuses that violate the most basic of human and constitutional rights. The report draws on information obtained from contracts and audits of the most populated immigration detention facilities through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by NIJC in 2011.

This policy brief examines the inappropriate use of deterrence as a rationale for immigration detention. The brief serves as a resource for advocates to push back against the argument that you can punish people to stop them (and others) from seeking safety, which disregards constitutional protections and the United States’ international obligations.

This report provides an updated review of conditions at immigration jails featured in the original Expose & Close reports from 2012, as well as, additional detention centers in Florida, Nevada, California and Pennsylvania. The report documents a complete lack of accountability in a system that continues to be plagued by deaths, suicides, inadequate medical care and violations of due process.