WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amid record high immigration detention levels under the Biden administration and bipartisan efforts in the Senate to permanently gut the U.S. asylum system in exchange for the White House’s funding request for Israel and Ukraine, Freedom for Immigrants urges the Senate to safeguard critical asylum protections and reject more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and foreign wars. According to recent reports, the deal in discussion would implement an asylum ban, create near impossible barriers to apply for asylum, and undermine humanitarian and other forms of parole. 

NEW ORLEANS — Private prison company GEO Group is reportedly ending its operations of the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center (Pine Prairie), a remote immigration detention center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, with a heinous record of abuse and torture. The company will lay off 119 employees. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has stated its intent to continue using the detention facility through its agreement with Evangeline Parish. The Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition, including those formerly detained at Pine Prairie, are calling for the full closure of the prison and for the release of all who remain detained. 

LUMPKIN, Ga. — More than 120 individuals detained at the Stewart Detention Center (SDC) in Lumpkin, Georgia, submitted a petition today to local officials and the Biden administration demanding action in response to inhumane conditions and mistreatment at the detention facility, including mold leading to eye conditions, spoiled food causing food poisoning, denial of hot water and medical care neglect. Privately operated by mega prison corporation CoreCivic, Stewart is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Governor Newsom vetoed a popular criminal justice and immigration reform bill late Friday evening, for now upholding California’s practice of double punishing immigrant community members.

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. 

NEW ORLEANS – The Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition announced a nationwide Day of Action (12 hours) in response to the continued premature and avoidable deaths of community members held in immigration cages. Events will take place July 22-24.

LOS ANGELES — Visionary immigrant rights leader and prison abolitionist Laura Hernandez has been named executive director of Freedom for Immigrants (FFI), a national nonprofit organization devoted to abolishing immigration detention.

NEW ORLEANS – The Shut Down NOLA ICE Coalition issued the following statement about the death of Ernesto Rocha-Cuadra, a 42-year-old Nicaraguan man who endured over a year in the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center (“Jena”), a privately-operated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center run by the GEO Group, Inc., in Jena, Louisiana. The facility has a disturbing track record of death and abuse.