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Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced a bill on Thursday to bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using warehouses and other similar buildings as detention centers, as the government gears up for a campaign of mass incarceration of immigrants that has been likened to the building of concentration camps.
The bill, known as the “Ban Warehouse Detention Act,” would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from having any agreements to “establish or operate any new immigration detention model,” including the use of warehouses, tents, and other structures for such detention camps.
“From Romulus to cities across the country, we do not want ICE cages in our communities. ICE and CBP are murdering people in the streets, tearing families apart, abducting our neighbors, and locking them in cages,” said Tlaib in a statement.
One of these warehouses is a facility purchased by ICE in Romulus, Michigan, near Detroit, earlier this year. The plan for it and other facilities has been temporarily put on pause as the agency transitions from leadership under former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to her replacement, Markwayne Mullin.
“Now they are attempting to buy and convert warehouses across our country into massive prison camps to expand their operations, despite strong local opposition in communities like mine,” Tlaib went on.
The legislation is cosponsored by 13 other lawmakers. It was drafted with Detention Watch Network and has the support of nearly 100 advocacy and rights groups.
ICE is in the process of seeking and purchasing 23 warehouses across the nation to convert into detention and processing facilities.
If these plans all went through, the U.S. would add capacity for a whopping 92,600 more people — more than double the already record-shattering 73,000 people held in ICE detention as of January. This would vastly increase ICE’s ability to carry out President Donald Trump’s mandate to meet detention and arrest quotas. It would also subject thousands more people to the agency’s practices of neglect and denial of medical care, with some treatment amounting to torture, leading to record deaths in ICE custody over Trump’s second term in office.
The warehouse purchases cost tens of millions of, or over a hundred million, dollars for each facility, with plans for sites spanning between New Hampshire in the east and Utah in the west, according to a report by Bloomberg in January. This would further entrench immigration agents’ presence across the country, with many police agencies already newly working with ICE amid the administration’s latest push.
ICE has bragged that the ICE facilities would bring jobs and revenues to the regions they’re in. Many residents across the country have been pushing back against plans for ICE warehouse detentions in their communities.
“For the profiteers and private interests, detention is just another money-making venture. Even while posting record profits, Trump and his greedy private prison campaign donors want more,” said Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Illinois). “Since its inception, immigration detention has been DEHUMANIZING and DEADLY. With more than 47 deaths in immigration detention in the last 15 months, we say NOT ONE MORE.”
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