Detention Watch Network National Day of Action
Contact Colorado Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet to express your concern about continued immigration detention during an ongoing global pandemic and urge them to demand that ICE #FreeThemAll
“Immigration detention has proven to be both dangerous and unnecessary. It’s time for us to move away from mass incarceration in the immigration context. We can reduce the harm to individuals and communities—while also ensuring that immigrants appear for their hearings—by instead investing in community-based support programs and appointed counsel.”
— Jorge Loweree, RMIAN Board Member
In Fiscal Year 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had custody of over 500,000 people in civil immigration detention. The US government detains people through a system of more than 200 jails across the country, with contracts with local government and private prison companies, such as GEO Group Inc, and CoreCivic. Though the number of people in detention decreased in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of people remain locked up in detention facilities across the country. The number of people held in detention centers has increased by 78% since President Biden has taken office. According to ICE, as of 9/13/2021, there are 600 people in ICE detention with active COVID-19 cases.
The conditions of incarceration make containing the virus difficult. People are transferred between detention centers, and regulations (such as mask-wearing) are not mandated or uniform throughout the country.
“As a medical provider practicing to reduce health disparities in structurally marginalized individuals, I see how stress and deprivation of detention impacts health. I have witnessed a phenomenon of young individuals in detention develop high blood pressure, revealing an underlying process of accelerated aging resulting from arrest and accumulated traumatic experiences, mental health treatment hampered by treating traumatic experiences with drugs rather than compassion and understanding, and large outbreaks of COVID-19 that could have been prevented or alleviated with timely implementation of best practices and policies. There is an urgent need for humane immigration reform in the United States, one that reduces or eliminates detention as an engine of human suffering and deterioration of the human spirit.”
— Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes, MD