To: Congress
Close all ICE detention centers & get ICE off our streets!
The U.S. has one of the largest detention systems in the world—a system designed to detain and deport immigrants who came to this country seeking asylum, safety, and opportunity. And as immigrant detention has expanded over the decades, our government has turned to for-profit corporations and contracts with local jails to detain people. These entities greedily try to make a profit by slashing medical and mental health interventions, ignoring sanitation and safety standards, and cutting corners—leading to widespread neglect and harm.
Immigrant detention centers have little to no independent oversight—ICE and DHS are responsible for auditing them. So complaints and calls for accountability have largely gone ignored.
Meanwhile, we have ICE agents on the streets and in communities across the country, sowing chaos and turning our cities into battlefields. Enough! Demand members of Congress close all ICE detention centers and get ICE off our streets NOW!
Why is this important?
Every year, thousands of immigrants have their rights violated by a system that operates with very little oversight and accountability. People are denied access to medical care. They are subject to subpar living conditions. They experience preventable illnesses and injuries. And every year, people die at the hands of our government in detention.
Thousands of people have come forward with complaints of sexual assault and physical abuse under DHS’s watch. Only a fraction of those complaints are ever investigated.
Meanwhile, ICE agents have flooded our streets—violating our civil liberties, abusing and harming peaceful observers and protesters, kidnapping people in broad daylight, and even murdering people as the world watches in horror.
Immigration enforcement was never about safety. It was always about power. But our government doesn’t get a free pass to abuse, detain, and violate the rights of the people who live, work, and care for their families here. We demand a just and fair immigration system that upholds the dignity of every human being that lives here.
ICE and DHS have terrorized the people of this country. And it’s time we close all detention camps and stop the deportation-industrial complex once and for all by getting ICE off our streets. Sign the petition!