Amid Trump's Claims of Mass Deportation, ACLU Sues for Information on U.S. Immigration Detention Capabilities

Few organizations have been as active this election cycle as the the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a non-profit civil rights organization that fights for the rights of individuals and organizations in the United States.

In the las few weeks alone, the ACLU has published a report on widespread inhumane treatment at migrant detention centers in Louisiana, filed a lawsuit do disclose records on refugees at a controversial Guantanamo Bay facility and joined over 70 other organizations in urging ICE to immediately release immigrants who have won their deportation cases.

On Wednesday, the organization continued its activities by filing another lawsuit, this one seeking information on the federal government's capacity to detain and deport immigrants on a large scale, as USA Today reports.

The lawsuit targets the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Border Patrol, and the Department of Justice (DOJ). The ACLU argues that the public lacks crucial information about the operations of the detention and deportation system, despite billions of dollars spent annually on these activities.

"If a mass deportation and detention system ends up being established by a future administration, we have many concerns about how that could impact the civil rights and civil liberties of immigrants," said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project. The reference to mass deportations is related to Trump's potential immigration policies, which he himself has described could turn into a "bloody story."

ICE currently operates or uses 91 detention facilities, but a 2018 report by the American Immigration Council found that the agency relied on as many as 630 sites, many of which were privately operated and remotely located. As of September 2023, ICE was holding 37,395 immigrants in detention, with 60% of those detainees having no criminal record, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

The ACLU is seeking detailed records on ICE's bed capacity, hotel contracts, DHS personnel transfers, and transportation logistics. The DHS and DOJ have yet to comment on the lawsuit.

According to a report by the American Immigration Council, a mass deportation effort to remove one million unauthorized immigrants per year could cost up to $88 billion annually and take a decade to complete, with an estimated total cost exceeding $900 billion. There is also the effect such operation could have on the economy, which could be over $260 billion.