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Jayapal Urges DHS to Stop Use of Private, For-Profit Immigration Prisons

SEATTLE, WA – U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Ranking Member of the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee, sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas following her inspection of the Northwest Immigrant Processing Center (NWIPC), formerly the Northwest Detention Center, earlier this month. She urged Secretary Mayorkas to phase out the use of private, for-profit immigration detention facilities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to end NWIPC’s contract with GEO Group when it expires next September.

“I have long found the use of for-profit prisons concerning—a concern shared by many of my colleagues in Congress,” Jayapal said. “As President Biden himself said in 2023, ‘There should be no private prisons, no private detention centers.’ Unfortunately […] the use of private prisons in the immigration system has grown: as of July 2023, 90.8 percent of individuals in immigration detention were held in detention facilities owned or operated by private prison companies, up from 81 percent in 2020. The two largest for-profit companies GEO and CoreCivic […] raked in $1 billion and $552 million respectively from ICE in just 2022.”

The NWIPC has a history of troubling allegations including:

  • An August 2023 report detailing human rights abuses at the center;
  • A February 2024 report finding that the NWIPC and other immigration detention facilities regularly detain immigrants in solitary confinement beyond the United Nation’s 15-day threshold for considering such confinement to be torture;
  • An April 2024 report showing that there were 41 calls made to 911 from the center in a ten week period this year;
  • The tragic death of Charles Leo Daniel in March 2024, after he was kept in solitary confinement for a total of 1,418 days; and
  • An August 2024 lawsuit filed by the Washington Department of Health requesting access to the facility after they received over 700 complaints from detainees since April 2024.

Jayapal further stated, “We have a responsibility to treat all human beings with dignity and fairness. All facilities operated by or in connection with the United States government, funded by taxpayers should reflect that. Unfortunately, it is clear facilities operated by private prison companies are falling far short of our obligations. It is time for us to transition away from using these for-profit companies.”

Jayapal has been a leader in the effort to end the use of private, for-profit detention centers and to instead substantially reduce our reliance on detention and use humane community-based alternatives to detention. She has led calls to DHS to urge the closure of facilities with records of abuse and has also worked to push accountability and transparency at these facilities. She has conducted significant oversight over the Northwest Detention Center.

Jayapal is the sponsor of the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, transformative legislation that would overhaul the immigration detention system by ending the use of for-profit, private detention facilities, repealing mandatory detention, and protecting the civil and human rights of immigrants.

The full text of the letter can be read here.

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