Media Coverage of the ICE Detention Bed Quota July 12, 2016
The immigration detention bed quota, contained in U.S. Department of Homeland Security appropriations language, is considered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and some members of Congress to require ICE to fill 34,000 detention beds daily at an annual cost to taxpayers of $2 billion. This approach – which exists in no other law enforcement context – prevents ICE from saving taxpayer dollars by using less costly, effective alternatives when detention is not necessary, and guarantees a specific – and arbitrary – detention level, regardless of actual need.
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The Deportation System’s ‘Lock-up Quota’ Is Just As Bad as It Sounds By Michelle Chen – July 11, 2016
Law enforcement is in the business of dealing with insecurity. But the one thing that’s always secure about America’s law-enforcement system is the number of immigrants it imprisons each day. The government has written into law the number of non-citizens it seeks to deprive of freedom at any given moment: 34,000.
A study by Detention Watch Network (DWN) and Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)explores the social impacts
of the perverse incentive of the so-called “lockup quota” of 34,000 designated “beds” for immigrant detainees.
The system locks in a federal funding stream and sustains jobs, commercial contracts, and a political consensus around the need for ever more “border security.” So the detention industry banks on 34,000 bodies, culled from a bottomless supply of more than 11 million undocumented migrants, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local police round up and funnel in potential deportees.
DWN and CCR argue that “Local lockup quotas that serve to protect the bottom line of private companies thus incentivize the imprisonment of immigrants.”
The yearly spending—about $2 billion for fiscal 2016—and the headcount are the two numbers that matter. The deportation machine has fueled the churn of warm bodies, which it prioritizes over concerns that other law enforcement systems must deal with like the actual charges against detainees, their due process rights, or questions of their safety or the public’s.
