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U.S. immigration authorities have increased the number of detention centers by 69% over the last year, holding an average of 65,000 immigrants nationwide—a record figure—amid a surge in raids ordered by the Trump administration.
A study conducted by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), released this week, details that 18 facilities were added this year to the 26 centers that existed in 2024.
The report also collects details of operations carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, recently in Chicago, and denounces serious violations of due process and human rights.
Undocumented individuals are "disappeared" as soon as they are in the custody of federal authorities and are transferred to contracted county jails, federal and state prisons, or private detention camps.
Many of these centers have signed recent contracts with ICE or have increased their capacity as part of the expansion of the country's immigrant detention system, the report indicates.
It adds that the problems have worsened as the Trump administration rushes to meet its goal of deporting one million people by the end of this year.
The deportation system depends directly on detention capacity, and to support it, the Trump administration seeks to double the number of beds to 107,000, while ICE currently holds more than 65,000 people in custody, a record figure according to the study.
The new centers are mostly leased spaces in county jails, but also include maximum-security prisons like Marion in Indianapolis and the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.
Illinois prohibited ICE from detaining people in its county jails and state prisons, but the agency has increasingly used its processing facilities in Broadview, near Chicago, to hold people for weeks before their deportation or transfer to centers in other states.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed NIJC attorneys that the Chicago area operations facilities once housed 3,000 detainees, and that ICE was working to expand into a closed private prison in Kansas.
[Publicidad]