ICE Opens 3 New Detention Centers

CG Immigration Team Attorney, Marshall Goff was able to speak with reporter Noah Lanard from Mother Jones about ICE opening three new detention centers recently with money it has not been given even after Congress rejected the request for more detention money. One of these three detention centers are located in Adams County, MS – right before the entrance to Natchez, MS. This particular detention center was known for its 2012 riot, which left one guard dead and more than a dozen people injured. Although ICE has still not finalized its contract for the Adams County Prison, Marshall and the CG Immigration Team has recently gotten clients from the prison with many of the people being held there being asylum seekers. It has also been reported that some of the detainees who have been transferred to the Adams County Prison last week are still not showing up in ICE’s detainee locator tool, which violates ICE detention standards.

The article states that when members of Congress reached a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown in February, they gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement a simple instruction: Stop detaining so many people. Instead, ICE pushed its detention population to an all-time high of 54,000 people, up from about 34,000 on an average day in 2016 and well above the 40,520 target Congress set for ICE.

Now, just after Congress rejected another request for more detention money, ICE is continuing to spend money it hasn’t been given. Mother Jones has learned that ICE has started using three new for-profit immigration detention centers in the Deep South in recent weeks. One of them has seen the death of three inmates following poor medical treatment and a violent riot in 2012 that left a guard dead.

“Four years after the riot, we were deeply concerned to find that the facility was plagued by the same significant deficiencies in correctional and health services and Spanish-speaking staffing. In 19 of the 38 months following the riot, we found CoreCivic staffed correctional services at an even lower level than at the time of the riot in terms of actual post coverage. Yet CoreCivic’s monthly reports to the BOP, which were based on simple headcounts, showed that correctional staffing levels had improved in 36 of those 38 months.”

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