Last month ICE started using three new for-profit concentration camps in Louisiana and Mississippi. All three facilities are run by private prison companies.
Mother Jones reported on Tuesday that “Interviews with lawyers and prison officials and ICE records reveal that the agency has begun detaining migrants at the Adams County Correctional Center, a Mississippi prison operated by CoreCivic; the Catahoula Correctional Center, a Louisiana jail run by LaSalle Corrections; and the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, run by GEO Group in Basile, Louisiana.”
GEO Group had announced that ICE would soon begin using the Basile facility in Louisiana, but ICE had not previously disclosed the use of the Adams County and Catahoula prisons.
The Adams County Prison has a history of reported abuses. The facility has seen the death of inmates following poor medical treatment and a riot that broke out in 2012. There have also been reports of guards abusing the people locked inside the prison, inadequate medical care and rotten food.
Adams and the other two prisons have the capacity to hold about 4,000 people.
There are not enough judges in Louisiana to hear the new asylum cases, and there are no immigration courts in Mississippi. As a result, many new asylum seekers in these States will be forced to represent themselves in cases heard by judges in other states via video.
There is an all-time high population of 54,000 people imprisoned by ICE, up from about 34,000 on average in 2016, and well above the 40,520 target set for the government agency.
Photo: “Adams County Correctional Center_Mississippi_Overhead View” by Prison Insight is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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