SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
October, 24 2017, 11:45am EDT
Contact:
212-627-2227
5 Fast Facts on Federal Immigration Jails
WASHINGTON
While the Trump administration tries (and fails) to ban certain Muslims from entering the US, the government is actively working at home to lock-up the immigrants already here.
In the last 9 months, ICE has arrested nearly 100,000 people suspected of being deportable from the United States: a 43% increase over the same period under Obama. Where are all these people going? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been putting out feelers to privately-run jails in Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul, Salt Lake City and Southern Texas to see if they can house 4,000 more detainees.
So far 12 detainees have died in ICE custody since Trump has taken office.
Expanding immigration jails is the obvious--and horrific--next step for an administration that has lied about and demonized immigrants at every turn.
Camille Mackler, NYIC Director of Immigration Legal Policy, is available for media interviews.
Here are five fast facts on federal immigration jails:
1. Immigration law is civil, not criminal. So the vast majority of immigrants in these jails won't have any criminal record, or might have done their time long ago - yet are being thrown into criminal facilities anyways.
2. Because immigration law is civil, detained immigrants are denied the rights or protections that incarcerated people should get - such as a lawyer appointed to them if they can't afford one, a speedy trial, or safety against cruel and unusual treatment.
3. Not all immigrants are eligible for bond (immigration's version of bail). Of those that are, the minimum bond that can be given by law is $1,500, but it is rare to see bonds lower than $5,000. Most bonds are more than $10,000, even if the person has no criminal record and can show he or she has strong ties to his or her community.
4. There is no requirement that the correction officers working in these facilities have language competency, so many detainees can't even communicate about basic needs or health emergencies.
5. The Trump administration has already stated that they won't require that new facilities follow even the minimum standards followed by older facilities. So those detained in these facilities may be locked up in facilities that won't meet basic standards of humanity and habitability, like access to open space.
The New York Immigration Coalition aims to achieve a fairer and more just society that values the contributions of immigrants and extends opportunity to all. The NYIC promotes immigrants' full civic participation, fosters their leadership, and provides a unified voice and a vehicle for collective action for New York's diverse immigrant communities.
LATEST NEWS
'No One Should Have a Copyright on Vance Being Booed': Video From Olympics Blocked on X
The vice president attended the opening ceremony in Milan, where people also protested the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics.
Feb 06, 2026
US Vice President JD Vance was booed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Italy on Friday, but at least one widely shared video of it was swiftly scrubbed from X, the social media platform controlled by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk.
Acyn Torabi, or @Acyn, "is an industrialized viral-video machine," the Washington Post explained last year, "grabbing the most eye-catching moments from press conferences and TV news panels, packaging them within seconds into quick highlights, and pushing them to his million followers across X and Bluesky dozens of times a day."
In this case, Torabi, who's now senior digital editor at MeidasTouch, reshared a video of the vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, being booed that was initially posted by filmmaker Mick Gzowski.
However, the video was shortly taken down and replaced with the text, "This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner."
Noting the development, Torabi, said: "No one should have a copyright on Vance being booed. It belongs to the world."
As of press time, the footage is still circulating online thanks to other X accounts and across other platforms—including a video shared on Bluesky by MeidasTouch editor in chief Ron Filipkowski.
JD Vance loudly booed at the Winter Olympics today.
[image or embed]
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) February 6, 2026 at 4:25 PM
The Vances' unfriendly welcome came after a Friday protest in the streets of Milan over the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics, with some participants waving "FCK ICE" signs.
The Trump administration has said the ICE agents—whose agency is under fire for its treatment of people across the United States as part of the president's mass deportation agenda—are helping to provide security for the vice president and other US delegation members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Industry Cronies' at Trump's EPA Reapprove Dangerous Pesticide Dicamba
"It’s hard to see how Making America Healthy Again was anything but another broken campaign promise," said one critic.
Feb 06, 2026
The US Environmental Protection Agency on Friday announced its anticipated reapproval of dicamba for two key crops, a move which, given the pesticide's proven health risks, places the EPA at apparent odds with President Donald Trump's vow to "Make America Healthy Again."
“The industry cronies at the EPA just approved a pesticide that drifts away from application sites for miles and poisons everything it touches,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in response to Friday's announcement.
“With the EPA taking aggressive pro-pesticide industry actions like this, it’s hard to see how Making America Healthy Again was anything but another broken campaign promise," Donley added. "When push comes to shove, this administration is willing to bend over backward to appease the pesticide industry, regardless of the consequences to public health or the environment.”
The EPA said in a statement that the agency "established the strongest protections in agency history for over-the-top (OTT) dicamba application on dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean crops," and that "this decision responds directly to the strong advocacy of America's cotton and soybean farmers."
While scientific studies have linked exposure to high levels of dicamba to increased risk of cancer and hypothyroidism and the European Union has classified dicamba as a category II suspected endocrine disruptor, the EPA said Friday that "when applied according to the new label instructions," it "found no unreasonable risk to human health and the environment from OTT dicamba use."
This is the third time the EPA has approved dicamba for OTT use. On both prior occasions, federal courts blocked the approvals, citing underestimation of the risk of chemical drift that could harm neighboring farms.
The agency highlighted new restrictions on dicamba use it said will reduce risk of drift.
"EPA recognizes that previous drift issues created legitimate concerns, and designed these new label restrictions to directly address them, including cutting the amount of dicamba that can be used annually in half, doubling required safety agents, requiring conservation practices to protect endangered species, and restricting applications during high temperatures when exposure and volatility risks increase," it said.
Critics noted that the EPA during the Biden administration published a report revealing that during Trump’s first term, senior administration officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, prior to a previous reapproval.
Others pointed to the recent appointment of former American Soybean Associate lobbyist and dicamba advocate Kyle Kunkler as the EPA's pesticides chief.
"Kunkler works under two former lobbyists for the American Chemistry Council, Nancy Beck and Lynn Dekleva, who are now overseen by a fourth industry lobbyist, Doug Troutman, who was recently confirmed to lead the chemicals office following endorsement by the chemical council," the Center for Food Safety (CFS) noted Friday.
The Trump EPA has also come under fire for promoting the alleged safety of atrazine, a herbicide that the World Health Organization says probably causes cancer, and for pushing the US Supreme Court to shield Bayer, which makes the likely carcinogenic weedkiller Roundup, from thousands of lawsuits.
CFS science director Bill Freese said that “the Trump administration’s hostility to farmers and rural America knows no bounds."
“Dicamba drift damage threatens farmers’ livelihoods and tears apart rural communities," Freese added. "And these are farmers and communities already reeling from Trump’s [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids on farmworkers, the trade war shutdown of soybean exports to China, and Trump’s bailout of Argentina, whose farmers are selling soybeans to the Chinese—soybeans China used to buy from American growers.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Three-Time Trump Voter Calls C-SPAN to Apologize for 'Supporting This Rotten, Rotten Man'
"This is not a decent man. This is not an honest man. He openly takes bribes. He's pathetic as a president."
Feb 06, 2026
As polling shows Americans are increasingly unhappy with President Donald Trump's authoritarianism, economy, and overall performance during his first year back in power, some of his voters are speaking out about feeling "swindled" and having buyer's remorse, including one who called into C-SPAN on Friday.
A man identified only as "John in New Mexico, Republican," called in to "Washington Journal" after President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account with the heads of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama edited onto the bodies of apes—which was widely condemned, including by some congressional Republicans, before it was taken down.
"I voted for the president—supported him—but I really want to apologize," the caller told anchor Greta Brawner. "I mean, I'm looking at this awful picture of the Obamas. What an embarrassment to our country. All this man does is tell lies. He is not worthy of the presidency."
During Trump's first term, the Washington Post tallied at least 30,573 "false or misleading claims." The trend has continued since his 2020 loss—about which he's often lied—and into his second term. Last year, Glenn Kessler, who was editor and chief writer of the Post's "Fact Checker," found inaccuracies in 32 claims Trump made in just one interview marking 100 days back in office.
The C-SPAN caller on Friday also ripped Trump's relationships with corporate leaders and deadly immigration operations, saying: "He takes bribes, blatantly, and now he's being a racist, blatantly. They were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon the little kids and the women and children. Not just the immigrants in the school, all the children are scared."
"This is not a decent man. This is not an honest man. He openly takes bribes. He's pathetic as a president. And I just want to apologize to everybody in the country for supporting this rotten, rotten man," the caller said, confirming that he voted for Trump in all three of the most recent presidential elections. He also discussed the difficulty of finding jobs and primary care physicians in New Mexico.
Common Dreams has not independently verified the caller's personal details. C-SPAN's call-in feature dates back to 1980, and "Washington Journal" has been the network's flagship program for such calls since 1995. This particular call quickly caught the attention of political observers, as Trump and others in his administration contend with growing outrage over US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions and mounting allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest.
"Wow, it's finally happening!" wrote political commentator Ed Krassenstein on X. "Republicans are waking up to the con that Donald Trump is. Listen to this Trump voter who called into C-SPAN to apologize to the American people for voting for Trump. He tears Trump apart for his racist meme about the Obamas, as well as his inhumane ICE raids and his corruption."
The post about the Obamas was later removed. As Reuters reported:
"A White House staffer erroneously made the post," a White House official said. "It has been taken down."
A Trump adviser said the president had not seen the video before it was posted late on Thursday and ordered it taken down once he had.
Both officials declined to be named. The White House did not respond to a question about the staffer's identity. Only a few senior aides have direct access to Trump's social media account, according to the Trump adviser.
MS NOW anchor Katy Tur played a recording of the C-SPAN caller on her network Friday and noted that "this man isn't the only one who appears to be over it. That frustration is being borne out in poll after poll after poll. The numbers all say the same thing. There are no outliers here."
"The president is too focused on foreign policy, too focused on his 2020 conspiracy theory that he won the election when he did not. Too cruel to migrants and children. Too focused on enriching himself. Not focused enough, by the way, on the economy. Not successful in his big promise of lowering prices. Unethical," she summarized.
Tur also pointed to the recent upset in a special election for a deep-red Texas Senate district—Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Trump-endorsed Leigh Wambsganss—and new Axios reporting that Republicans are worried about losing both chambers of Congress, which they currently control by narro in the midterm elections this November.
In the face of such fears, Trump has bullied some Republican-controlled states to gerrymander their political maps and declared Monday that the Republican Party should "nationalize the voting" in the United States, in defiance of the Constitution. The US Department of Justice is also fighting to acquire voter data from states, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is summoning state election officials for a February 25 conference to discuss "preparations" for the midterms.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular