Biden administration teams up with private prison corporation CoreCivic to set back New Jersey’s bid to end immigration detention
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org
ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY — U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch today granted an injunction in favor of CoreCivic and the Biden administration in the private prison corporation’s legal challenge to New Jersey’s AB 5207 law, allowing for the Elizabeth Detention Center’s (EDC) lease to be extended.
In 2021, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed AB 5207 into law, prohibiting the state from entering into or renewing local and private contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The private detention contract for EDC, the last of such in the state, is set to expire on August 31.
The following statement is from Andrea Carcamo, policy director with Freedom for Immigrants.
“Judge Kirsch’s decision flies in the face of fairness, dignity and respect for immigrants and the will of New Jerseyans who want out of the deeply immoral and abusive immigration detention system.
“It’s one thing for conservative judges to stand in the way of progress. It’s another to face repeated betrayals from Joe Biden, despite his promise to end for-profit immigration prisons. The Biden administration’s most consistent immigration policy has been its impassioned defense of private prison corporations.
“This is not the first time the administration has sided with private prisons. Earlier in his term, President Biden carried on his predecessor’s backing of GEO Group, another private prison company, in an attempt to overturn California’s private prison ban. Biden again backed the industry over our communities when he excluded immigration detention facilities from his 2021 private prison executive order.
“By repeatedly defending the private prison industry’s stake in the barbaric business of locking up immigrants en masse, Biden is not only breaking a key campaign promise — he’s putting more lives at risk in the deadly detention system.
“While detention deprives Black, brown and Indigenous immigrants of their freedom, rights and dignity in both privately and publicly operated detention facilities, the private prison industry’s greed has played an integral role in entrenching and expanding immigration detention. Private prison operators like CoreCivic, incentivized to detain as many people for as long as possible, have built a multi-billion dollar business off the caging and suffering of mostly Black and brown immigrants. We need leaders who will act to end this parasitic relationship — not defend it. The Biden administration should allow New Jersey’s law to go forward without interruption, letting the Elizabeth Detention Center contract with CoreCivic lapse on August 31.”
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Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) is devoted to abolishing immigration detention, while ending the isolation of people currently suffering in this profit-driven system. FFI monitors the human rights abuses faced by immigrants detained by ICE through a national hotline and network of volunteer detention visitors, while promoting community-based services that welcome immigrants into the social fabric of the United States.