News broke recently that the Biden Administration is launching an “alternative to detention” pilot program in Baltimore, MD and Houston, TX in an attempt to make good on the President’s campaign promise to end for-profit immigrant detention centers.1,2 The pilot initiative would shackle immigrants with electronic monitoring devices and expand home confinement and curfew programs. But don’t be fooled. This is not a humane alternative.
The way to get rid of for-profit detention centers is abolition. And the only humane alternative to immigrant detention is setting people free. No one should be shackled or locked up for exercising their right to migrate.
Freedom is near.
References:
- Stef W. Kight. Scoop: Biden reinvents migrant detention, Axios. Feb. 7, 2022.
- The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values As A Nation of Immigrants, Joe Biden 2020 Presidential Campaign. Accessed Mar. 16, 2022.