Days after taking office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order that instructed the attorney general not to renew Department of Justice contracts with private criminal detention facilities — those related to the Bureau of Prisons, not immigration enforcement.
“Today, ICE detains between 36,000 and 40,000 individuals, 91 percent of whom are held in private detention facilities,” the senators wrote in the letter. Immigration lawyers and civil rights groups are furious with the Biden administration following the release of an NPRin mid-2023 that exposed horrific medical, mental, and physical experiences that immigrants endured while under federal watch.
A look at publicly available ICE data showed that 13 privately run facilities, “contract detention facility” centers, continued to be in operation.