Organizational Letters to Congress

Dear President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas,

The 220 undersigned organizations write to express our deepest disappointment regarding the planned reopening of Moshannon Valley Correctional Center, a former Bureau of Prisons (BOP) jail, as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center and the conversion and expansion of the Berks County ICE detention center to an adult facility for women. We call on you to:

• Immediately terminate the contracts signed last week with Clearfield County for the Moshannon Valley facility and Berks County for the Berks facility;
• Halt all other efforts to expand the ICE detention system through any new or extended ICE contracts;
• Apply the Executive Order on privately operated prisons to end immigration detention contracts with private prison companies and local governments; and
• Take significant steps to dismantle the system of mass immigrant incarceration and the use of detention for asylum processing.

President Biden promised to end for-profit detention, including for undocumented immigrants, and to bring justice and fairness to the immigration system. Instead, your administration is increasing the use of immigration detention and filling the private prison beds that criminal justice advocates have worked for years to empty with immigrants and asylum-seekers. We expect and demand more.