California senators have released a statement condemning the Trump administration’s intention to use federal Bureau of Prisons facilities to detain refugees and asylum-seekers.
Sens. Alex Padilla, Adam Schiff, and other Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats — including Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin — wrote to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to express grave concerns about a Feb. 7 memo from BOP’s Correctional Programs Branch on the policy change.
“Immigration detainees in federal prisons will face substandard conditions and care, and their detention will only exacerbate significant institutional problems facing the Bureau. We therefore urge you to reconsider this plan and instead work with us to address BOP’s existing challenges,” the senators wrote.
The move is a policy revival from Trump’s first administration, where multiple allegations arose of profound mistreatment and dehumanizing conditions against detainees. Detained immigrants who were seeking asylum were often denied access to legal counsel, phone calls, clean clothing, educational programming, and religious freedom.
The Senators criticized the memo for not explaining how to manage interaction between immigrant detainees and those incarcerated safely.
“Until serious funding and staffing challenges outlined above are addressed, federal prisons simply cannot safely and humanely meet the needs of its current inmate population, much less the needs of civil immigration detainees,” they wrote.
