“Detention is deadly,” said Nancy Palacios, director of organizing and membership at the Detention Watch Network. “People in immigration detention centers call it ‘hell on earth’ because it is. What we’re seeing now is increasing cruelty under the Trump administration. People are not commodities to be shipped, disposed of, or taken advantage of in detention warehouses or any detention facility — full stop. We demand an end to Trump’s cruel expansion of mass incarceration and the closure of detention facilities forever.”
Backed by tens of billions of dollars in funding approved by congressional Republicans and Trump last summer, ICE has purchased commercial warehouses and is moving to convert them into detention centers with the capacity to accommodate… Up to 10,000 people. Business insider I mentioned Earlier this month, since January, ICE has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase at least 11 massive facilities in eight states,” including Utah, Georgia and New Jersey.
But the American Immigration Council male Earlier this year, “local advocacy and outrage” blocked ICE’s attempts to purchase at least a dozen warehouses.
Saturday’s actions aim to build on that local opposition. “Communities are tired of the brutality, chaos and horror of ICE,” said Katie Bethel, executive director of MoveOn Civic Action. “Across the country, ordinary people are rising up against the Trump administration’s plans to lock up tens of thousands of immigrant children and families in their backyards.”
“The backlash to ICE’s conversion of warehouses into massive detention centers has been swift, vocal and growing,” Bethell said. “We will not stop protesting until contracts and expansion plans are cancelled. With gas prices skyrocketing, health care premiums exploding, and the cost of living skyrocketing, we need elected leaders to invest in our communities, not in cages.”
“Warehouse facilities are built to store products, not people,” added Leah Greenberg, co-director of Indivisible.
“Converting them into detention centers exposes our neighbors to unsafe, degrading, and inhumane conditions, harms surrounding communities, and locks states into long-term infrastructure without public input,” Greenberg added.
Nearly 50 people have He died in ICE custody During Trump’s second term in the White House, which saw a massive and illegal expansion of immigration detention and deportation efforts.
Prior to Saturday’s demonstrations, Representative Rashida Tlaib (Democrat from Michigan) said: Legislation introduced It would prohibit ICE from “constructing, operating, expanding, converting, or renovating any warehouse, building, or similar structure for the purposes of detaining persons.” “Immigration and Customs Enforcement is actively exploring, procuring, and planning to convert approximately 23 warehouses nationwide into new immigration detention and processing facilities,” which would “rapidly increase detention capacity to 92,600,” Tlaib’s office noted.
“We don’t want ICE cages in our communities,” Tlaib said. “Ace and [Customs and Border Protection] They kill people in the streets, tear families apart, kidnap our neighbors, and lock them in cages. “Now they are trying to buy up and convert warehouses across our country into massive concentration camps to expand their operations, despite strong local opposition in communities like mine.”
“This will only increase the serious human rights violations and trauma experienced by migrant families, including medical neglect, inhumane conditions, and higher deaths,” Tlaib continued. “The Warehouse Detention Prohibition Act would stop this expansion by prohibiting the use of warehouses to detain immigrants.”
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