The administration hopes to unveil a series of executive actions that President Biden can sign but will likely have to wait for the outcome of Mexico's June 2 presidential election.
On the campaign trail four years ago he promised “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” But then he waived two dozen laws to continue constructien on the border wall, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. [pbs]
Biden maintained Trump’s Title 42 policy, which expelled asylum seekers under the pretext of protecting public health, for more than two years after taking office, even as the ACLU was suing to put an end to the policy.
He also chose to adopt a reworked version of another Trump immigration policy innovation, prompting more lawsuits:
The Biden administration has instituted its version of Trump’s asylum transit ban. That rule allows immigration enforcement officials to turn away migrants for a number of reasons: if they do not have valid travel and identification documents, if they’ve traveled through another country without applying for asylum, if they don’t show up at a port of entry at an appointed time, and more. [Vox]
Blaine Bookey, legal director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, said the deportations were “a disgrace”.
“They protect no one. They ‘deter’ no one. They violate our laws and treaty obligations, legal guidance from the UN Refugee Agency, and basic principles of humanity. They must end,” Bookey said in a statement on Friday.
The Biden administration is frequently choosing to hold asylum seekers in detention while their case goes through the system instead of just processing them and releasing them with a court date as was the standard practice before Trump:
We write to express outrage over your administration’s expansion of the cruel and unnecessary immigration detention system. Last month, you signed a spending bill that provides historically high funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention - $3.4 billion in taxpayers’ money. Our organizations work with and advocate on behalf of people who have experienced immigration detention. They carry life long scars from the mistreatment and dehumanization they endured because of the United States’ reliance on detention, mostly through private prisons and county jails. Your administration is further entrenching this reliance, marking an utter betrayal of your campaign promises.
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In an abrupt change of course, over the last two years, ICE has instead increased the number of people in custody. Most of the facilities on ICE’s internal closure list remain open, despite numerous reports from advocates and service providers further documenting the ineffectiveness of detention and the need for a different approach. As the political winds shifted, so did your funding requests to Congress. In October 2023, you requested supplemental detention funding, and your FY2025 budget requestsought funding for 34,000 beds instead of the 25,000 sought in the two previous cycles. The result is unsurprising: the FY2024 spending bill you signed provides ICE $3.4 billion to jail an average of 41,500 immigrants per day, historically high funding surpassing all four years of the Trump administration.
…
Detention does not provide an efficient or ethical means of border processing, and it certainly does not indicate to migrants that they are welcome in the United States. It merely exists to further the political goal of deterrence, which is cruel, inhumane and misguided – as even the most punitive forms of detention have been proven not to deter people from seeking safety or a better life.
Sincerely,
18 Million Rising
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Amnesty International USA
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Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
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Human Rights Watch
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Mijente
Muslim Advocates
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Refugees International
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Sikh Coalition
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Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice
…
This report – a joint effort by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program
(HIRCP), and researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) – provides a detailed overview of how solitary confinement is being used by ICE across detention facilities in the United States, and its failure to adhere to its own policies, guidance, and directives.
The study reveals that immigration detention facilities fail to comply with ICE guidelines and directives regarding solitary confinement. Despite significant documented issues,
including whistleblower alarms and supposed monitoring and oversight measures, there has been negligible progress. The report highlights a significant discrepancy between the 2020
campaign promise of U.S. President Joseph Biden to end solitary confinement and the ongoing practices observed in ICE detention.
Over the last decade, the use of solitary confinement has persisted, and worse, the recent trend under the current administration
reflects an increase in frequency and duration. Data from solitary confinement use in 2023 – though likely an underestimation as this report explains – demonstrates a marked increase in the instances of solitary confinement.
This report exposes a continuing trend of ICE using solitary confinement for punitive purposes rather than as a last resort – in violation of its own directives. Many of the people interviewed
were placed in solitary confinement for minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints. Many reported inadequate access to medical care, including
mental health care, during their solitary confinement, which they said led to the exacerbation of existing conditions or the development of new ones, including
symptoms consistent with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The conditions in solitary confinement were described as dehumanizing, with people experiencing harsh living conditions,
limited access to communication and recreation, and verbal abuse or harassment from facility staff.
In the last five years alone, ICE has placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times, with an average duration of 27 days, well exceeding the 15-day threshold that United
Nations (UN) human rights experts have found constitutes torture. Many of the longest solitary confinement placements involved people with mental health conditions, indicating a failure to provide appropriate care for vulnerable populations more broadly.
The treatment of people in immigration detention facilities and the excessive, punitive use of solitary confinement is not only contrary to ICE’s own policies and guidance but also violates U.S. constitutional law and international
human rights law
During the first year of the Biden administration, DHS worked with oversight agencies to review facilities with substandard conditions… The administration closed out or reduced capacity for some of the worst facilities following this review, but these actions were the “barest minimum” compared to what officials involved in the review had envisioned.[50] In August 2022, another internal DHS study recommended closing or downsizing nine immigration detention centers.[51] However, ICE only ended contracts with two of the detention centers mentioned in that review.[52]
ICE refuses to comply with recommendations from oversight bodies, such as the DHS OIG, when they issue scathing reports about life-threatening conditions. For example, the OIG issued a report in March 2022 on Torrance County Detention Facility which had already failed one Nakamoto inspection in 2021, recommending that ICE immediately stop detaining people there.[54] ICE rejected the
recommendation, and continued to keep hundreds of people detained in Torrance.[55] That same month, ICE’s contracting officer also issued a report finding that violations of federal standards continued in Torrance.[56]
Later that year, in August 2022, a young man from Brazil named Kesley Vial, died in the Torrance facility.[59] ICE’s review of Kesley’s death addressed similar failures identified in the OIG report that contributed to his fatal suicide attempt.[60]
At another ICE detention facility in Port Isabel, Texas, the OIG reported in February 2023 on “unsafe conditions,” and found the facility did “not meet standards for detainee segregation.”[61] Months later, on October
8, 2023, Julio Cesar Chirino Peralta died in ICE custody after being detained at Port Isabel.[62]
Under Biden, 12 people have
died in ICE custody.[64]
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Continuing to fund ICE’s detention system is inhumane and misguided. For fiscal year 2023, U.S. taxpayers paid $2.8 billion for ICE detention.[66] Following the end of the Trump-era Title 42 mass expulsion policy in May, the Biden administration adopted a more hardline approach, implementing new “sweeping” enforcement measures, including increasing detention capacity.[67] In doing so, the administration chose to ignore years of
evidence showing that punitive enforcement measures do not lead to decreases in migration numbers.[68] Detention numbers spiked, from 22,000 in May to over 39,000 by the end of October 2023.[69] In continuing to expand the incarceration of people facing administrative removal proceedings, the administration ignores clear evidence showing that legal representation and community-based support services are a more humane and effective method of ensuring compliance at immigration court hearings.[70]
This is just more of the same from Biden.
On the campaign trail four years ago he promised “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” But then he waived two dozen laws to continue constructien on the border wall, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. [pbs]
Biden maintained Trump’s Title 42 policy, which expelled asylum seekers under the pretext of protecting public health, for more than two years after taking office, even as the ACLU was suing to put an end to the policy.
He also chose to adopt a reworked version of another Trump immigration policy innovation, prompting more lawsuits:
Biden has resumed deportation flights to Haiti despite protests from the UN Refugee Agency and others:
The Biden administration is frequently choosing to hold asylum seekers in detention while their case goes through the system instead of just processing them and releasing them with a court date as was the standard practice before Trump:
This policy has been protested by Human Rights Watch, Amensty International, and a slew of other organizations:
Rights Groups Oppose President Biden’s Expansion of ICE Detention:
Under Biden, ICE’s use of solitary confinement violates its own policies and guidelines and constitutes torture according to the standards of UN experts:
Have you ever seen or heard about “the trolley problem”?
You know what isn’t an option in it. “I walk away without taking any responsibility.”
Because willfull inaction is a choice with consequences. It is an action by itself.
And you’re genuinely trying yo deny Russians use information warfare. This is exactly what I meant with the whole reduced cognitive capacity bit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/oNTxKDOAxp
https://www.propastop.org/eng/2024/04/04/know-your-troll-russian-troll-farms-identity-mimicry-in-2024-and-how-to-spot-it/
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/5/pdf/2005-deepportal2-troll-factories.pdf
Under Biden, ICE has ignored the documented unsafe conditions in the detention facilities it contracts with resulting in the needless deaths of multiple detainees: