As Border Patrol agents see a rise in illegal crossings, Congressman Raúl Grijalva last week introduced legislation that bans private prisons, ends family detention, and removes Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) daily mandate to fill 34,000 beds with detainees. The bill, The Justice Is Not For Sale Act, also reinstates the federal parole system, requires ICE to improve monitoring of detention facilities, requires ICE to use Alternatives to Detention, and increases oversight to prevent companies from overcharging inmates and their families for services like banking and telephone calls.
Grijalva’s bill came on the same day that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report calling for DHS to immediately release families from detention.
“As the corporations that imprison people for profits join the ranks of the most aggressive lobbyists in our nation’s capital, every American should be concerned about the policies they’re pushing in the Halls of Power. Their only agenda is to fuel incarceration and minimize the standards by which we treat the incarcerated,” said Grijalva in a statement issued last week.
Congressman Grijalva is a prominent voice in the effort to end for-profit prison contracts and family detention for illegal aliens in the United States. He said been relatively quiet on the issue of private prisons for those in the country legally.
In June, he visited two facilities outside of San Antonio, Texas, and chronicled the experience in an op-ed. In July, he led the Congressional Progressive Caucus in hosting a forum on family detention.