In 2015, the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), the nations watchdog for civil rights issues, reviewed the conditions in ICE and ICE contractor immigration detention facilities. The report is clear that immigration detention is punitive, abusive, and should end.

While ICE acknowledges that immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive or a punishment, the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) found that: 1) migrants “detained by ICE in its own and in for-profit prison company-run facilities are treated as less than human”, 2) that these “facilities are subjecting detained immigrants to torture-like conditions”, 3) detained individuals are subjected to “torture-like mental pain and suffering”, and 4) some detention center officials and guards “intentionally cause and threaten detainees with physical pain or suffering.”¹ These observations expressed by USCCR mirror concerns documented in a large and rapidly growing corpus of law reviews, academic journal articles, and migrant advocacy reports. It is time to prevent expansion of immigration detention and implement immediate independent unannounced inspection of ICE detention facilities–HB624 does this.

Please sign on in support of HB624 the Rubio-Maestas Immigration Detention Facilities Act.

1. USCCR, “With Liberty and Justice for All: The State of Civil Rights at Immigration Detention Facilities,” A Briefing Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Statutory Enforcement Report (Washington D. C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2015), 147, 149, 151, http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/Statutory_Enforcement_Report2015.pdf.