Established in 2009 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Obama administration, immigration bed quotas intensified the mass incarceration crisis in this country. Here’s how it works.
DHS appropriates $2 Billion in annual operations funding to maintain 34,000 filled prison beds. Many of these beds are in immigration detention centers. The prisons justify detaining immigrants by preying on xenophobic fears and racist presumptions of immigrants. As a result, the system demonizes them as a threat to be tamed.
Detention isn’t even the most profitable outcome for these private prisons either. Alternatives to Detention are significantly cheaper. Taxpayers could save $1.44 billion each year if immigrants weren’t detained. So why does the system keep this practice going?
This continues because private prisons are 79% of the United States immigrant detention system. They have created a business around the detention of people and its profits keep growing.
Black and brown immigrants are being exploited by the prison industrial complex and we need to stand in solidarity with them. Organizations like the ACLU, the Detention Watch Network, and the Center For Constitutional Rights are calling for an end to this exploitation and for ICE detention centers to be shut down for good.