Freedom for Immigrants Calls on Biden Administration to Abolish Detention

Media Contact: Rebekah Entralgo, rentralgo@freedomforimmigants.org

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA — Freedom for Immigrants Deputy Executive Director Layla Razavi issued the following statement in response to the 2020 presidential election results:

“The past four years have laid bare the stark reality that the U.S. immigration detention system cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.

The current moment requires strong and courageous leadership to bring truth and reconciliation for immigrant communities around the country. Immigrant communities have always, but especially in the last four years, been the target of relentless attacks. The next administration must take proactive steps to address systemic and institutional forms of racism and brutality that dehumanize people of color.

It is for these reasons and countless others that we call on the incoming administration to abolish immigration detention. This is a system that kidnaps people from their homes, cages them indefinitely, and profits off of their suffering. And it is all funded by our hard-earned taxpayer money.  

The first step towards a world without cages begins with divesting from the inhumane, profit-driven immigration detention system and investing in community-based alternatives that benefit all communities.  Every administration since the Reagan administration has invested in immigration detention, at the behest of private prisons companies that formed in 1983 and 1984.  This must stop now.  A country that welcomes immigrants rather than imprisoning them is viable, not just in our lifetime, but now.

Over the next four years, Freedom for Immigrants will continue to monitor human rights abuses in ICE prisons and secure investments in programs that serve as models for a world without immigration detention.  In the meantime, we continue to monitor ICE’s actions during this transition of power and will hold the current administration accountable for any escalation in human rights abuses or mass deportations they may seek to inflict during the final days of their reign.”

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