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Immigrants, rights activists call on Biden to end private detention
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Last month President Joe Biden instructed the Department of Justice to end contract renewals with private prisons as a first step to end racial disparities and pave the way to fair sentencing.
But Biden, who ran on promises to make sweeping changes to immigration policy, left private immigration detention untouched, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to continue renewing contracts with these private facilities.
For years, immigrants in detention and advocacy groups have documented a lack of oversight and physical and mental abuse at the facilities. Today, about 80 percent of immigrants in detention centers are in private detention, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report.
But addressing abuse and neglect is only the beginning of a much larger detention problem, Shah said.
It’s also about racial justice.
“What we know about these systems [is] that [they] disproportionately target people of color and Black people, and we re seeing that even now, in the context of who is currently in detention and who is being deported.
Silky Shah, executive director, Detention Watch Network
“What we know about these systems [is] that [they] disproportionately target people of color and Black people, and we re seeing that even now, in the context of who is currently in detention and who is being deported,” she said.
Death of man detained by ICE challenges Biden administration
Barbed wire lines a recreation area at the Stewart Detention Center on Nov. 15, 2019, in Lumpkin, Gerogia. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
by: Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Posted:
Feb 8, 2021 / 05:01 PM EST
(CNN) It’s something Azadeh Shahshahani dreads hearing.
And something she says she’s heard too many times already.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced last week that a man who’d been detained at the privately run Stewart Detention Center in South Georgia died after contracting coronavirus. The 57-year-old, identified by Mexican authorities as Félix Montes de Oca Marcelino, had been hospitalized for weeks when he died in Columbus, Georgia, on Jan. 30.
The death of an immigration detainee who'd contracted coronavirus is spurring renewed calls for action. It's the fourth Covid-related detainee death tied to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia and the first since President Biden took office.