Trump goes all out on immigration detention centers
The major budget bill enacted on July 4th provides record funding for detention centers for immigrants awaiting deportation. ICE, the immigration enforcement agency, has been allocated $45 billion, with the aim of further intensifying Donald Trump's policy of mass arrests and deportations.
Donald Trump's "great and beautiful" law , adopted by the US Congress on July 3, will "triple federal funding for immigration detention centers." This will pave the way for a "multiplication of these centers" across the US and "reinforce concerns about the treatment of immigrants in detention, whose numbers continue to grow," The Washington Post points out .
Congress has just allocated $45 billion (€38.2 billion) to ICE, the US immigration police, for the detention of immigrants over the next four years, which is “an amount greater than the cumulative spending on detention during the terms of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Trump's first term,” the newspaper points out.
A large portion of these funds "will go to private prison operators tasked with doubling the country's detention capacity to 100,000 beds," which will allow for the arrest of more undocumented immigrants who could be deported, the newspaper continues.
The average number of people detained by ICE reached 56,000 in June, the daily newspaper in the federal capital reported, adding that the new budget law also provides for allocating $46.5 billion (€39.5 billion) to continue construction of the wall along the border between the United States and Mexico, and $6 billion (€5.1 billion) for border surveillance technologies.
Courrier International
