Hundreds of national, state, and local organizations joined a letter urging Congress not to allocate more money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detention.
Advocates sent a letter to House and Senate Leadership and Chair and Ranking members of the Appropriations Committees urging them not to increase funding for immigrant detention as they consider spending bills for fiscal year 2019.
Congress already inflated funding for immigrant detention for this past fiscal year despite numerous deaths in ICE custody, documented instances of abuse and sub-par facility conditions, and consistent overspending. Congress must decide how to fund the government by September 30.
See the text of the letter below.
September 5, 2018
Re: FY19 Continuing Resolution Must Not Allow for Expanded Immigration Detention
Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Leader Schumer, Speaker Ryan, Leader Pelosi, Chairman Shelby, Vice Chairman Leahy, Chairman Frelinghuysen and Ranking Member Lowey:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s appropriated budget for immigration detention and enforcement has jumped by nearly one billion dollars in the past two years, from $3.212 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $4.110 billion in fiscal year 2018. DHS has achieved this massive increase through chronic fiscal mismanagement and outright manipulation of the appropriations process. Over the past two years DHS has persistently overspent its detention budget, confident that Congress will permit regular infusions of funds through reprogramming and transfers. By meeting this expectation, Congress has essentially given DHS the power to write its own appropriation by using its inflated detention budget as the starting point for each subsequent spending negotiation.
This cycle must end. In March, Congress funded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to jail an average daily population of 40,500 individuals for fiscal year 2018; yet as we approach the end of the year ICE holds more than 45,000 individuals behind bars. This growth represents a capacity to jail nearly 350,000 people each year. And now DHS is angling to increase its detention budget above 2018 levels in a Fiscal Year 2019 Continuing Resolution, yet again ratcheting up its baseline funding in anticipation of subsequent negotiations over a final funding bill.
DHS’s manipulation of the appropriations process comes at a human cost that will haunt our nation for generations to come. As spending negotiations are underway, nearly 500 children torn from their parents as part of this administration’s zero tolerance policy remain in government custody, alone and scared, still separated from their parents. ICE is continually proven to be incapable of providing for the basic health and safety of the people it jails each year, with more than half of deaths in custody recently reviewed attributable to medical failures, and sexual abuse unchecked throughout ICE’s jails. This summer, one-and-a-half-year old Mariee Juarez died shortly after her release from the South Texas Family Residential Center, and a complaint filed on her behalf asserts her death was a direct result of her time in ICE custody. DHS’s own Inspector General has raised serious concerns about the conditions inside ICE’s jails and has found the system of inspections governing ICE’s jails to be a sham, with facilities regularly passing inspections despite significant deficiencies.
DHS must be held to account for its fiscally irresponsible actions which fuel a detention system that destroys lives and families every day. With each spending cycle we urge you to vigorously pursue cuts to immigration detention and enforcement funds; and in negotiating a Fiscal Year 2019 Continuing Resolution we urge you to explicitly preclude DHS from expending funds on detention above agreed-upon levels for Fiscal Year 2018.
Sincerely,
