Immigrant detentions soar despite Biden's campaign promises

Alexander Martinez says he fled from homophobia, government persecution and the notorious MS-13 gang in El Salvador only to run into abuse and harassment in America’s immigration detention system.

Immigration detainees leave the cafeteria under the watch of guards during a media tour at the Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, La., Sept. 26, 2019. [File Photo: AP/Gerald Herbert]

Since crossing the border illegally in April, the 28-year-old has bounced between six different facilities in three states. He said he contracted COVID-19, faced racist taunts and abuse from guards and was harassed by fellow detainees for being gay.

“I find myself emotionally unstable because I have suffered a lot in detention,” Martinez said last week at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana. “I never imagined or expected to receive this inhumane treatment."

He's among a growing number of people in immigration detention centers nationwide, many of whom, like Martinez, have cleared their initial screening to seek asylum in the U.S.

The number of detainees has more than doubled since the end of February, to nearly 27,000 as of July 22, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s above the roughly 22,000 detained last July under then-President Donald Trump, though it’s nowhere close to the record in August 2019, when the number of detainees exceeded 55,000, ICE data shows.

The rising detentions is a sore point for President Joe Biden’s pro-immigration allies, who hoped he would reverse his predecessor’s hardline approach. Biden campaigned on ending “prolonged” detention and use of private prisons for immigration detention, which house the majority of those in ICE custody.

“We’re at this really strange moment with him,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, which advocates for ending immigration detention outright. “There’s still time to turn things around, but his policies so far haven’t matched his campaign rhetoric.”

In May, the Biden administration terminated contracts with two controversial ICE detention centers — one in Georgia and another in Massachusetts — getting praise from advocates who hoped it would be the start of a broader rollback.

But no other facilities have lost their ICE contracts, and Biden has proposed funding for 32,500 immigrant detention beds in his budget, a modest decrease from 34,000 funded by Trump.

A White House spokesman said Biden's budget reduces the number of ICE detention beds and shifts some of their use to processing immigrants for parole and other alternatives.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a recent congressional hearing that he's “concerned about the overuse of detention” and pledged to continue to review problematic facilities.

The rising number of asylum-seekers detained for prolonged periods is among the most concerning developments, said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

The number of detainees who have passed their initial asylum screening has leapt from around 1,700 in April to 3,400 in late July, making up about 13% of all detainees, according to the most recent ICE data.

“By ICE’s own policy, these are people that shouldn’t be in detention any longer,” Altman said, citing ICE's process for paroling asylum-seekers until a judge decides their case.

ICE officials declined to comment.

Martinez, the Salvadoran national, cleared his initial screening in May, which determines whether an asylum-seeker has a “credible fear” of persecution in their homeland.

But his lawyers say ICE is keeping him detained because it wrongly believes he’s a member of the MS-13 gang.

Martinez says he fled El Salvador after he and his family received death threats because he testified against the gang in the killing of one of his friends. He says investigators tried to get him to testify in other gang-related murders but he was reluctant because he had not witnessed those crimes.