FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced new immigration enforcement guidelines, which keeps the mass incarceration and deportation system intact while granting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents broad discretion in its decisions to detain and deport immigrants.

The following statement is from Layla Razavi, co-interim executive director of Freedom for Immigrants:

“President Biden was elected with a clear mandate to turn the page on the xenophobic and hateful actions of the last administration, but this policy falls painfully short. The new guidance fails to address the underlying framework ICE uses to criminalize immigrant communities. It doubles down on exclusions used to penalize immigrants and criminalize the most basic human acts of migrating and seeking safety.

“Given ICE’s well-documented history of abusing its power to detain and deport our community members, we know this guidance alone will not reign in the agents entrusted to implement this guidance in good faith. Without shrinking or dismantling the massive, militarized presence amassed by ICE and CBP, immigrant communities will continue to be funneled into the abusive immigration detention system.

“We call on the Biden administration to rescind Title 42, slash the budget for all enforcement, and honor its campaign promise to end private detention. This directive will do little to protect immigrants in the face of a massive enforcement machinery designed to keep Black and brown immigrants imprisoned. Immigrants are human beings and valued members of our communities—they’re our neighbors, parents, and loved ones. It’s time this administration treated them as such.”

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Freedom for Immigrants is devoted to abolishing immigration detention, while ending the isolation of people currently suffering in this profit-driven system. Visit https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/ to learn more.