Advocates hope Illinois private detention ban sparks change
CHICAGO — Far from the southern border crisis, Illinois has launched a bullish effort to undercut the Trump administration’s immigration detention practices, and politicians and activists are taking note.
The state recently enacted a first-of-its kind ban on privately-run immigration detention, as President Donald Trump’s threat of mass deportations looms and his administration scrambles to find more jail space in an already overcrowded system. Promises to bar private immigration detention have been made repeatedly by Democrats on the 2020 campaign trail and advocates hope the Illinois law will galvanize others.
“No one benefits from keeping people unnecessarily incarcerated. The only people who do benefit are shareholders,” said senior policy counsel Fred Tsao, of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which has fought private detention.
Illinois became the first state to bar private companies from contracting with local communities to detain immigrants under a law signed last month by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who said it made the state “a firewall against Donald Trump’s attacks” on immigrants. The goal was to prevent the construction of a 1,300-bed facility roughly 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Chicago. Some estimate it would have nearly doubled Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s capacity to house immigrants in the area.
The move was hailed as a major victory by immigrant rights advocates, who have fought off other proposals in the area. While a national ban would be politically and practically unrealistic with most immigrant detainees being held in privately-run detention, some 2020 candidates held up Illinois as a model.
“Private immigration detention centers are exploitation for profit, and I’m glad to see Illinois ban them,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted before stopping in Chicago last month. “My plan to end private prisons would require the rest of the country to do the same.”
The Illinois law extends an existing 1990 private prison ban to include immigration detention. Only two other states, New York and Iowa, have banned private correctional facilities, but they don’t include immigration facilities.
California, which has gone further than Illinois in limiting local entities when it comes to immigration detention, could follow suit on private detention. A proposal before California state lawmakers that seeks to phase out and bar private prisons by 2028 was amended last month to include immigration cases.
Democratic state Assemblyman Rob Bonta said he expanded his plan after the death of a 27-year-old who suffered a brain hemorrhage while detained by immigration authorities in California.
“It’s a statement about our values,” he said. “Private prisons run counter to our values.”
Other states have also taken a stand. Earlier this year, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, halted the sale of a former state prison that was going to be used as a private immigration detention center after the company couldn’t promise it wouldn’t detain adult immigrants who had been separated from their children.
Private detention facilities have been used for immigration since the 1980s but didn’t take off until the 2000s, when management was increasingly outsourced, according to Lauren Brooke Eisen, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who wrote a book on private prisons.