Former top immigration officials from the Biden administration warned Tuesday that billions for immigration enforcement signed into law earlier this month will escalate the rapid detention and deportations of immigrants.
During a virtual press conference with the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, the former Department of Homeland Security officials said they expect to see a trend toward states building “soft” temporary detention centers similar to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the name given by Florida Republicans to an Everglades detention center.
Funding for those initiatives will come from President Donald Trump’s tax break and spending cut bill signed into law earlier this month that provides roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement, the former officials said.
Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill provides $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the nation’s highest-funded law enforcement agency, to hire 10,000 new agents and carry out deportations. Another $45 billion will go to ICE for the detention of immigrants and $450 million in grants to states to partake in border enforcement.
Billions more are provided for border security and for the military to partake in border-related enforcement.
Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council under former President Joe Biden said she expects to see states running their own immigration detention centers similar to the “Alligator Alcatraz” center that state officials quickly erected to hold immigrants.
That state-run facility in the Florida Everglades is expected to house up to 5,000 immigrants.
Safety for migrants questioned
Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration, said the quickly built detention centers will likely create an unsafe environment for immigrants brought there.
The lack of experience and training for employees running those centers will also put migrants at risk, he said.
“People are gonna get hurt,” he said. “They’re gonna die.”
He added that with the arrest quotas that immigration officials have been given, roughly 3,000 arrests a day, “ICE is going to focus on those (immigrants) that are easily reachable, those who have been complying and checking in,” either with immigration officials or appearing in immigration court.
“Hitting quotas is not in the national security interest,” Houser said.
Houser said with the rapid arrest and detention of immigrants, the need for detention centers will likely lead to states building the “soft sided” detention centers in “some of the most rural parts of the country where they cannot be properly staffed and resourced.”
Flores said if states work to build their own centers like the one in Florida, there will likely be a lack of oversight because DHS has significantly fired federal employees that ran the watchdog that conducted oversight of ICE — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Flores currently serves as the vice president of immigration policy at FWD.us, which focuses on immigration policy and reform.
Increase expected in third-country removals
Royce Murray, a former DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy and a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official during the Biden administration, said she is concerned that the Trump administration will now be able to ramp up third-country removals with the increase in funding.
Any removals to a third country “have to be to a country that is safe,” she said.
If an immigrant has a final order of removal but their home country will not accept their deportation, then the United States typically looks for another country that will accept the removal — a third country.
The Trump administration has tried to secure agreements with countries to take deportees, such as Mexico and South Sudan, which recently ended a civil war, but is still experiencing violence.
The State Department warns against travel to South Sudan, but the Trump administration won a case before the Supreme Court seeking to use the East African country for third-country removals.
Murray said that the Trump administration is using third-country removals to “create a climate of fear” and get immigrants to self-deport.
She said if third-country removals are going to take place, they “need to be a place where people can successfully integrate.”
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