Starting today, a thousand immigration detainees will be moved to a medium-security federal prison in Victorville. The first buses carrying 250 detainees are from Texas and are scheduled to arrive in Victorville at 8 a.m. this morning. People who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, are awaiting their hearings in immigration court and have not been convicted of any crime. An ICE spokesman said the agency needs to use prison to house the detainees because of a “surge in illegal border crossings.” While the number of people apprehended on the southern border by the Border Patrol has increased 91 percent this year compared to the same period last year (88,171), the number of apprehensions this year—168,601—is the roughly the same compared to 2016—161,572. However, the numbers have been steadily decreasing since 2000, when nearly 1 million people who crossed the border illegally were apprehended.
In the past, undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers were released on parole–given ankle bracelets or told to check in—but with the “zero tolerance” policy of the Trump administration, that strategy has largely gone by the wayside. A spokesman for a union representing prison employees said federal prisons are not set up to hold immigration detainees, as they do not have immigration courtrooms, translators, law libraries with immigration law materials, or information for the detainees on how to call their consulates, all of which are required by U.S. law. In addition, the Victorville prison had closed nine housing units because it didn’t have enough staff for them.
