US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials could add 600 beds to detain unauthorized immigrants in New Jersey, according to new documents obtained by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday.
An additional 600 detainees could mark a significant increase in the number of people held in New Jersey. The Elizabeth detention center – the only facility in the state that holds detainees – can currently accommodate up to 300 detainees, the Bergen Record reported in April. There were 285 detainees in the facility as of the end of October, according to data analyzed by the Guardian from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Ice’s efforts to expand its capacity in New Jersey come as Joe Biden’s administration has faced pressure to close detention facilities. Donald Trump has pledged a mass deportation effort once he takes office in January, and it is not yet clear how the government will provide the resources to support such a huge undertaking. The documents offer insight into how Ice was already building up its capacity months before the November election.
“Instead of closing abusive detention facilities once and for all, the Biden administration is simply paving the way for the incoming Trump administration to conduct mass detention and deportation of immigrant communities nationwide,” Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s national prison project, said in a statement. “The Biden administration must instead work to close these facilities now.”
The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show that the private prison companies CoreCivic and the GEO Group, are under consideration for housing the additional detainees. CoreCivic already operates a facility that houses federal immigration detainees, while the GEO Group formerly operated another facility in consideration. Both of the facilities have come under scrutiny for poor conditions, the ACLU noted in a statement.
It is unclear from the documents how many other companies responded to Ice’s solicitation for proposals in June.
The documents offer a glimpse into how the facilities would be changed to accommodate the increase in detainees.
The proposal for the Elizabeth detention center, operated by CoreCivic, describes building an “outdoor recreation enclosure” that would consist of “a secure fenced walkway from the detention center to a paved area encircling a half basketball court, recreation equipment, a small canopy, a restroom for use by detainees along with security fencing, control gates and CCTV cameras”. No construction to the building would be necessary, it says.
The ACLU has spent months trying to gather more information on how Trump would execute his plans for mass deportation. It sued Ice earlier this month to get more information on how the agency plans to use for-profit commercial and chartered flights to deport people.
New Jersey lawmakers passed a measure in 2021 prohibiting local entities from entering into contracts to house federal immigration detainees. CoreCivic sued and successfully blocked the measure pending appeal.
Will Craft contributed reporting
