ICE is reopening shuttered prisons as detention centers. Many have a troubled past

"They shut down for a variety of reasons: staffing issues, allegations of abuse, even simply that there are fewer people in prison today than a few decades ago. Some prisons have sat vacant for years. But the Trump administration is now holding more than 65,000 people in immigration detention the highest level in history, and that has created huge demand for these properties."

""There's definitely been this pattern over the last nine months of the Trump administration looking to shuttered state prisons, shuttered former federal prisons as a way to quickly expand ICE detention," says Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the Detention Watch Network, a non-profit seeking to end immigration detention. She says this trend isn't new, but President Trump's immigration crackdown has accelerated the pace."

Empty prison facilities closed for staffing problems, abuse allegations, or declining inmate populations are being repurposed to meet surging ICE detention needs as immigration detention reaches over 65,000 people. At least 16 shuttered facilities across a dozen states have reopened for Immigration and Customs Enforcement since January, many owned or operated by private prison companies with troubled pasts. Advocacy groups report a pattern of reopening former prisons to detain different populations while oversight has been reduced. Specific examples include a CoreCivic facility in Dilley, Texas, where past reports cited lack of clean water and inadequate medical care and recent legal action alleges similar problems.

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