"In 1980, on any given day, we had 30 people in immigration detention. Every single person had had a full hearing and a full appeals process before any deportation order was acted on. And our government detained people only as long as necessary to get them on a plane back to their home countries.

Today, on any given day, we have over 52,000 immigrants — an all-time record — in over 200 detention centers spread across the country. That’s costing taxpayers more than $8.43 million a day; and $3.076 billion each year.

We should shut these centers down now. They are expensive, unnecessary, unsafe and their mission is to coerce people into forfeiting their rights.

First, unlike 1980 when we only detained those whose deportation hearings were complete, today every asylum seeker is put in a detention center before they get a hearing. Detention is not needed to make sure people show up: 97.5% of mothers with children who were never detained went to their hearings; 100% of all asylum seekers released from detention showed up at theirs."
[wbur.org]