Advocates breathed a sigh of reduction in March 2022 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) introduced it might cease holding federal immigration prisoners on the Etowah County Detention Middle, an remoted Alabama jail identified for being one of many worst locations to finish up within the ICE detention system.
For years activists inside and outside documented harsh and dangerous circumstances at Etowah, and in an internal memo, ICE stated the power had lengthy been a “severe concern because of the amount, severity, range and persistence of deficiencies.”
“I spent 4 years detained at Etowah, a facility that operated with no regard for human dignity, security, or the legislation,” stated Karim Golding, a Black Muslim activist initially from Jamaica, in an announcement. “The inhumane circumstances weren’t simply neglect — they have been deliberate.”
Now, because the Trump administration begins to make good on threats to arrest, detain and deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented folks, the sheriff in control of Etowah has announced the county jail will as soon as once more be holding as much as 60 immigrants at a time. Reopening Etowah to ICE is an element of a bigger push to quickly make house for jailing folks swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, reversing one win of the immigrant rights motion underneath the Biden administration after abuse scandals, civil rights complaints, COVID-19 outbreaks, and pressure from activists and Democratic lawmakers.
“To be clear, the plan to reopen this facility shouldn’t be solely a reckless waste of taxpayer {dollars} and native sources — it’s also a direct assault on our immigrant neighbors, aiming solely to gasoline Trump’s mass growth of immigration detention,” stated Tania Wolf, the southeast advocacy supervisor at Nationwide Immigration Undertaking, in an announcement final week.
Shortly after taking workplace in January, Trump ordered the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) to develop infrastructure for detaining and incarcerating immigrants and up to date arrivals searching for asylum whereas authorizing ICE to make arrests in place resembling faculties, church buildings, hospitals and courthouses. The variety of immigrants arrested within the inside of the nation has spiked as ICE works to satisfy aggressive quotas set by the White Home, and the variety of folks sitting in ICE jails has increased by greater than 4,000 since Trump took workplace.
As of February 27, greater than 43,700 people in ICE custody have been being held at native jails and privately run prisons throughout the nation, the best degree since 2019. Many of those folks have been faraway from communities the place they stay, not lengthy strains on the border with Mexico, the place the variety of new arrivals has plunged. The present jails and detention enters used to incarcerate immigrants are reportedly reaching capability. The Detention Watch Community, an immigration justice group, warned in an announcement this week that the ICE detention system is tormented by “a tradition of violence that leads to egregiously poor circumstances and even dying.”
“We live in an absolute humanitarian disaster in ICE detention facilities,” stated Kate Blankenship, managing accomplice of the human rights group Sanctuary of the South, in an interview. “There may be gross abuse occurring each single day, there’s mass overcrowding, and the chance for bond and parole are rapidly disappearing.”
Not less than three detainees have died in ICE custody since Trump took workplace, together with two on the Krome Service and Processing Middle in southern Florida. Blankenship is working with the household of one of many males, a 44-year-old Ukrainian refugee named Maksym Chernyak who died instantly final month.
Chernyak’s household stated he entered ICE custody with no preexisting medical circumstances. He was transferred to Krome from an area jail after being arrested in January throughout a home violence incident, though his wife says police misunderstood the state of affairs because of language obstacles. Blankenship stated Chernyak requested medical assist in February however didn’t obtain ample care regardless of registering hypertension. Different detainees known as for assist days later when Chernyak suffered a seizure within the bathe.
“We known as the officers, they usually didn’t wish to come till we informed him that he was useless,” stated Greg Welch, a witness who can also be in ICE custody and represented by Blankenship, in an interview to an area NBC affiliate. “He handed out. We tried to name medical. They didn’t wish to come as a result of they didn’t don’t have any workers till hours later, till he was principally unresponsive.”
In an announcement, ICE stated Chernyak was taken to the hospital on February 18, the place a mind scan revealed extreme bleeding, and workers started “mind dying protocol” on February 19 after makes an attempt at stabilization failed. Within the assertion, ICE additionally stated it’s dedicated to making sure “secure, safe, and humane environments” to folks in its custody and offering “complete medical care is offered from the second people arrive and all through the whole lot of their keep.”
Blankenship stated the dying of Chernyak and two other men since October 2024 on the Krome detention middle is a part of a much larger and well-documented pattern of medical neglect at immigration jails that may solely intensify as extra individuals are arrested and detained underneath Trump. A 2024 assessment by Physicians for Human Rights of 52 previous deaths in ICE custody over a five-year interval discovered that almost all have been preventable.
“Individuals hear ‘overcrowding’ they don’t essentially perceive the depth, that it’s fairly actually killing folks,” Blankenship stated.
One a current go to to the Krome detention middle, Blankenship stated she noticed males sleeping on naked flooring in ready rooms. Detainees pounded on home windows and pleaded for assist as she handed by within the hallway. Others reported being compelled to sleep on buses in a parking zone with out entry to a bathe for days, Blankenship stated.
“Krome is a disaster that’s occurring in all places,” Blankenship stated.
That disaster is ready to develop as detention growth continues. Final week, ICE signed a $1 billion, 15-year contract with the non-public jail firm GEO Group to reopen an empty jailhouse in Newark to incarcerate as much as 1,000 immigration prisoners at a time, the primary giant detention growth underneath Trump’s crackdown.
GEO Group pushed laborious for the contract and sued New Jersey in 2024 to successfully overturn a state legislation initially supported by racial justice activists that banned non-public firms from contracting with ICE to deal with immigrants. Now, GEO Group reportedly has plans to extend the power’s capability to incarcerate folks and doubtlessly generate an extra $500 to $600 million in annual revenue. The corporate has confronted a number of lawsuits after immigrants have been subjected to what attorneys describe as underpaid and forced labor. Most lately, a federal court upheld a ruling requiring GEO Group to pay $23 million in damages after the corporate paid ICE detainees $1 a day for labor at a detention middle in Tacoma, Washington.
GEO Group is the biggest immigration jail contractor for ICE, and personal firms run a majority of immigration detention services throughout the nation. An analogous development of immigration detention occurred through the first Trump administration, when 28 of 40 new contracts for detention house didn’t embody required documentation from ICE discipline workplaces demonstrating the necessity for such an growth, placing taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a month in unused jail house.
Others websites for incarcerating immigrants are run by local sheriffs who open their jails to ICE detainees — typically in far-flung rural areas removed from immigrant communities and authorized assist — in alternate for day by day funds from ICE for every particular person in custody. The Etowah County jail in Alabama is an effective instance.
Golding, the activist who hung out on the Etowah County jail, stated he was not excited when ICE ended its contract with the power in 2022 as a result of U.S. residents nonetheless needed to endure the depressing circumstances on the geographically remoted jail. In an announcement echoing different earlier ICE detainees, Golding stated the inhumane circumstances weren’t an accident and have been as an alternative implemented deliberately.
“This place constantly violated the Jail Rape Elimination Act, with safety and security almost nonexistent,” Golding stated. “This was a spot the place quarantine protocols meant nothing through the pandemic. Officers have been compelled to work with out protecting gear. Individuals acquired sick, and Etowah didn’t care.”
Golding stated he contracted COVID-19 and have become a “long-hauler” affected by power signs whereas awaiting launch from Etowah. He additionally joined the motion to close the power down, each for immigrants and economically impoverished locals who cycle by the jail, which is understood for maintaining folks locked up so long as potential.
“We fought to close this place down as a result of we knew the reality — detention isn’t about security or justice; it’s about cruelty, management and revenue,” Golding stated. “They locked folks away, denied them medical care, ignored their struggling and allowed the worst sorts of violence to occur underneath their watch.”
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