ICE Has A Record-Breaking 52,000+ Immigrants In Detention, Report Says
President Donald Trumps ongoing crackdown on immigrants has hit a grim new milestone. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told BuzzFeed on Monday that the agency had 52,398 migrants currently in detention; as the outlet noted, this is the largest number of ICE detainees in the agencys history.
ICE had requested funding for 52,000 detention beds, but Congress in February only agreed to fund a daily average of around 45,000 beds till the end of September. As Bloomberg noted, however, the Trump administration has the authority to expand the number of beds by transferring money to ICE from other security programs.
Last summer, for instance, DHS used funds from FEMA and the U.S. Coast Guard, among other accounts, to pay for extra beds for ICE.
When to explain the reason behind the increase, an ICE spokeswoman said that the agency
makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with U.S. law and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy, considering the merits and factors of each case while adhering to current agency priorities, guidelines and legal mandates.
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