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BREAKING: A damning new report by the DHS Inspector General finds ICE has abdicated its duty to hold detention facility contractors accountable. oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/… Thread: 
About 106 detention facilities are under contracts ICE operates itself rather than going through an intermediary. This means ICE has a lot of control over the terms and enforcing them. And also an important stick, imposing financial penalties on bad contractors.
Since 2016, ICE paid more than $3 billion to these contractors. So of course they are ensuring contractors abide by the contract terms, including critical provisions for the health and safety of detainees…
…and imposes financial penalties when they fail to adhere to the legally binding terms of the contract because we are talking about accountability for billions of taxpayer dollars. Right?
NOPE. Even ICE’s subpar inspections found 14,003 deficiencies in contract facilities from 10/1/2015-6/30/2018. Infractions like not notifying ICE about sexual assaults or allegations of staff misconduct.
Which is serious! Existing data shows LGBTQ immigrants in detention who are 97x more likely to be sexually abused and now the OIG is showing some sexual assaults aren’t even being reported. americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/ne…
So of course ICE imposed penalties on these bad actors because they are responsible for the health and safety of tens of thousands of people every day, right? Again no. ICE imposed a financial penalty in only %0.014 instances of a contractor failing to fulfill its contract
NOT JUST THAT. Just 26% of ICE’s contracts make it clear that ICE even CAN impose a financial penalty on a contractor that fails to adhere to the terms of the contract.
Hold on, it gets worse. Instead of penalizing bad actors, ICE instead just waives the detention standard that the contractor failed to comply with. ICE approved 96% of waiver requests. THIS INCLUDES WAIVERS OF SAFETY AND SECURITY STANDARDS
One waiver let the facility use tear gas instead of pepper spray. Ignoring how messed up it is a facility holding people waiting for their immigration case can have pepper spray, WHO THE HELL APPROVES USING A 10X MORE TOXIC SUBSTANCE ON IMMIGRANTS?!
oh and there is no official process for granting a waiver. You really can't invent this degree of ineptitude and negligence.
How can we trust ICE to enforce immigration law when they won’t even enforce the law with their own detention facilities? ICE is broken and needs to be fixed NOW
A record number of people died in immigration detention last year. I found 82% of last year’s deaths occurred in the facilities covered by this report, including a transgender asylum seeker, Roxsana Hernandez #JusticeforRoxsana washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11…
ICE has been expanding immigration detention beds, taking money already appropriated by Congress for other purposes and funding more beds. Even during the shutdown! immigrationimpact.com/2019/01/31/inc…
This report is the latest evidence that instead of pumping billions into even more detention beds run by contractors operating without accountability, Congress must invest in meaningful oversight and check the uncontrolled growth of detention. This is a matter of life and death
For more, check out this great column by @CAPimmigration @TomJawetz @laliaparada and @pwolgin americanprogress.org/issues/immigra…
