The size and scope of immigration detention has been rapidly expanding over the past few decades, largely fueled by the ever-increasing criminalization of migration. In the 2019 fiscal year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained as many as 50,000 people per day in over 200 facilities across the country. Considered a civil penalty rather than a punishment, immigration detention does not come with the protections of criminal punishment like guaranteed legal defense or a hearing before an Article III judge. Yet civil immigration detention, which takes place in local jails and private prisons across the country, looks much like criminal incarceration. Much criticism has been rightfully leveled at ICE for its abysmal standards of care and inhumane, profit-driven behaviors. A related body of literature also considers how the legal framework underlying this vast scale of detention perpetuates those inhumane conditions. This Note contributes to that conversation by focusing on a narrow piece of the legal framework: ICE’s use of preexisting intergovernmental agreements between local jails and the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) to house immigrant detainees.

Continue Reading ICE Detention Through U.S. Marshals Agreements