Shadow Prisons for Immigrants in Place Since 2005
In Portland teams are going door-to-door circulating a
petition to get ICE out of Portland, June 8, 2026
The current program of mass detention of immigrants is not a phenomenon unique to the Trump administration. The Detention Watch Network (DWN) points out that this has been U.S. policy for more than two decades, with people arbitrarily imprisoned within a "shadow prison system exclusively created for immigrants, operating in secrecy and with no programs to support those inside.
"Until the 1990s, border crossing was almost always a civil offence. In 2005, the government put in place Operation Streamline, a program that created an expedited process for the criminal prosecution of individuals apprehended at the border (often dozens of people at a time), with virtually no due process protections. The program expanded the number of federal prosecutions dramatically. These immigrant-only prisons are often referred to as 'shadow' prisons. [...]
"These 'shadow' prisons are managed by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and have been entirely operated by private prison companies with an appalling record of abuse and mismanagement, including the excessive use of solitary confinement. [...] 'Shadow' prisons often lack basic programming, with officials arguing that most immigrants with federal convictions will be deported and therefore don't deserve even the most basic services.
"People detained in 'shadow' prisons have led organizing and rebellion on the inside to protest deplorable conditions and extreme sentences. In February 2014, 2,000 of the 3,000 immigrants held at Willacy County Correctional Center [in Texas] -- a former detention centre converted into a 'shadow' prison -- led an uprising that not only dismantled the structure of the facility itself but led to its closure."
A 2021 executive order from then President Joe Biden that purported to close such facilities contained loopholes that permitted their ongoing usage by federal agencies. DWN points out that "in 2024 President Biden announced plans to ramp up border prosecutions as part of an overall plan to restrict access to people seeking asylum at the border, increase expedited deportations, and grow immigration detention capacity."
The Trump administration aims to continue increasing the total capacity of the ICE concentration camps. The American Immigration Council says that the system of immigration detention, "which did not fully take off until the mid-1990s, is now on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system by the end of President Trump's second term in office. With the Trump administration hoping to get over 100,000 detention beds or more online in 2026, ICE detention and the ongoing abuses inside these facilities will only grow more numerous."
The expansion of the network of concentration camps is being funded by the Trump administration's 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which put $45 billion for stepping up the broad anti-social offensive, including a massive increase in funding for ICE enforcement and detention. Another $70 billion was provided in June. The people are demanding no funding for ICE and that it be abolished immediately along with the closure of all the concentration camps, NOW!
Houston, TX, May 31, 2026
(With files from Detention Watch Network, American Immigration Council.)
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 5 - July 4, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/TS560510.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca