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In the 1980s, fewer than 2,000 people were locked up in an immigration detention facility on an average day in America. Since then, that number has skyrocketed, quadrupling from 7,475 to 32,985 people detained by ICE per day between 1995 and 2016. Under the administration of President Donald Trump, the numbers have shot up even higher — at one point last year, a staggering 56,000 people were behind bars each night in an ICE detention facility. When asylum-seekers and other migrants in Customs and Border Protection facilities are included, the total figure rises to nearly 80,000 people detained by the U.S. government per day.This explosive growth of the U.S. immigration detention system tracks the rise of mass incarceration in America, prompted by punitive legislation passed by Congress in the mid-1990s around the same time as the infamous “crime bill,” and later through a massive post-9/11 expansion. Since then, the number of detained immigrants in the U.S. has grown nearly every year under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Now, it’s a sprawling prison system, with 40 new immigration detention centers opening their doors just since the beginning of the Trump presidency alone. For immigrants caught in this system, life is often a nightmare of rampant medical neglect, overuse of solitary confinement, sexual abuse, excessive use of force, arbitrary transfers to other facilities across the country, unreasonably high bond costs, and long periods spent away from family members and loved ones. The COVID-19 crisis pulled the curtain back once again on the abuse and neglect that is deeply embedded in these detention facilities. While the rest of the country hunkered down in their homes, immigrants in detention have been forced to confront the pandemic in cramped conditions without adequate cleaning protocols or in some cases even basic sanitation supplies like soap. Guards have violently retaliated against immigrants protesting those conditions, and ICE has resisted efforts to secure their release for public health reasons.A combination of lawsuits and public pressure eventually forced ICE to release more than 1,000 people from detention because of concerns over the spread of COVID-19 between mid-March and early May. Legal actions brought by the ACLU have secured the release of more than 450 people so far. But there are still more than 21,000 people in immigration detention — a drop since last year’s high that is largely attributable to a near-total shutdown of the southern border. Whenever a new administration takes office, it will inherit an immigration detention system that has become an out-of-control, wasteful, and cruel behemoth. Drastically reducing the number of people trapped inside that system will be a crucial first step towards establishing a more humane and responsible immigration policy. In recent weeks, the ACLU interviewed a number of immigrants who were released from detention due to concerns over the COVID-19 crisis. They shared the following stories of what it was like to be incarcerated in an immigration detention facility during the pandemic. *Note: interviews have been condensed and edited.

We the People is a blog series that features the stories of members, supporters, volunteers, and allies of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming. Together we are accomplishing critical work in our state to protect and advance civil liberties across the state and beyond.

With many historic events in this country, key players in movement and moments that define us are often overlooked or forgotten. It’s time to change that.

Discussions of Wyoming’s death penalty resurfaced last month when Gov. Mark Gordon told a legislative committee that he was “looking very seriously” at issuing an executive moratorium on the death penalty, noting the roughly $1 million annual cost of keeping it on the books.

Chad Marlow, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU When

The Census is a brief survey the Census Bureau sends to every household in the country every 10 years.  It is required by the Constitution to count every living person in the United States, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.

Andrea Flores, Former Deputy Director of Policy, ACLU's Equality Division Afte

Kanya Bennett, Former Senior Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union Poli

Since the protests decrying the murder of George Floyd began in May, the institution of American policing has taken center stage. Activists are calling for change, and the phrase “defund the police” can be heard in cities across the country. As the concept of slashing police budgets and reinvesting those resources into Black and Brown communities goes increasingly mainstream, a more radical call is also gaining attention: Abolish the Police.On At Liberty this week, attorney, author, researcher, and organizer Andrea Ritchie and senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice, Carl Takei, joined us to talk abolition, divestment, and what a world without police might look. “[Abolition is] about recognizing the instinct in all of us to punish people who hurt us, or to seek retribution instead of repair, and to acknowledge that actually in order to create a society that is free from violence, we have to move away from mobilizing the state and giving the state a monopoly on violence to respond to violence,” says Ritchie. “Instead, we need to dig to the root causes of violence and transform those conditions and causes, such that we can all have an opportunity to live in a world free of violence, not just people who are in positions of privilege in the current political, social, economic structure.”