With the Department of Homeland Security now in the position of being private prisons’ last federal sugar daddy—CCA got a secret, no-bid $1 billion contract to build and run the country’s largest family detention center from ICE earlier this year—what can it do to ratchet down its increasing reliance on the industry? Luckily the ACLU has a helpful white paper that lays out what steps it should take:
1. End family detention and detention of asylum seekers (reducing detention population by 11,000-15,000 people)
2. End prolonged detention without bond hearings (reduction of 4,500+ people)
3. Interpret the mandatory custody statute to permit a range of custodial options, and apply it only to immigrants recently convicted of serious crimes who do not have meritorious immigration cases (reduction of 5,000-10,000 people)
4. Stop imposing exorbitant, unaffordable bonds (reduction of 1,300+ people)
There are obstacles, though: an anonymous ICE official told the Journal last month that ending ICE’s use of private prisons would require an 800 percent expansion of the agency’s capacity.