ACLU sues, questions how feds would mass deport migrants

The ACLU on Wednesday sued for information about the federal government’s capacity to massively detain and deport immigrants.
The lawsuit comes during a U.S. election season in which immigration has been central to the presidential campaign. Republican Donald Trump has promised a “mass deportation” of unauthorized immigrants, and Democrat Kamala Harris has pushed for tougher restrictions on asylum seekers at the border.
“If a mass deportation and detention system ends up being established by a future administration, we have many concerns about how that could impact the civil rights and civil liberties of immigrants,” said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
In the complaint filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York, the ACLU claims the federal government spends billions each year to fund detention and deportation infrastructure, yet “much of the specific information about how this detention and deportation apparatus operates is unavailable to the public.”
The ACLU first sought documents under the Freedom of Information Act in August, but the requests went unanswered, Virgien said.
Sign-up for Your Vote: Text with the USA TODAY elections team.
The lawsuit targets the Department of Homeland Security and agencies under its purview, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol, as well as the Department of Justice. USA TODAY reached out to Homeland Security and the Justice Department for comment on the lawsuit.
A mass deportation effort to remove 1 million people a year could cost $88 billion annually, according new research by the nonpartisan American Immigration Council. It could take 10 years to deport the unauthorized population in the U.S. and cost more than $900 billion in total, the council said in its report.
Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants are living in the U.S., according to estimates by the Pew Research Center.
On its website, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, lists 91 detention facilities nationwide that it operates or uses, including federal “processing centers” and detention centers, as well as county jails, where apprehended immigrants may be held in the custody of the U.S. Marshals.
But a 2018 report by the American Immigration Council found that ICE relied on many more detention facilities. The organization said ICE detained people at 630 sites and that “individuals detained by ICE were commonly held in privately operated and remotely located facilities, far away from basic community support structures and legal advocacy networks.”
As of Sept. 8, ICE held 37,395 immigrants in detention, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which seeks federal records through standing FOIA requests. Sixty percent of immigrants held in ICE detention had no criminal record, according to TRAC.
ICE states on its website that “detention is non-punitive” and that detention facilities owned or operated by ICE or by a state or local entity or government contractor “must comply with one of several sets of detention standards.”
Investigations by USA TODAY and others have repeatedly found inadequate medical care in detention, lack of access to legal representation and complications associated with detaining families.
The ACLU is seeking records that demonstrate the government’s capacity to detain, house and transport immigrants. The lawsuit asks for information on ICE’s maximum bed space, including under hotel contracts; DHS’ ability to transfer its personnel from one sub-agency to another; the department’s ground transportation capabilities, among other records.
More:ICE paid $17 million for migrant hotel rooms that went unused, watchdog says
If the next administration decides to increase immigrant detention and deportations, “we worry that there would be a lot of real problems with how it ramps up,” Virgien said.
Lauren Villagran can be reached at [email protected].