Following violent and indiscriminate sweeps of immigrant communities across the United States, the number of people in ICE detention has increased 75% since President Trump returned to the Oval Office. Yet, as the number of lawsuits against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign skyrockets, the federal government has continued to jail people indefinitely. Although judges across the U.S. have handed down more than 4,400 rulings of illegal detentions of immigrants since October, very few of these rulings have been acted upon. Reuters reporter Brad Heath says the unprecedented “pile-up” of tens of thousands of cases is straining the capacity of the rapidly shrinking staff at the Department of Justice and further delaying the release of immigrants from ICE jails.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.