The number of undocumented people held in immigration jails has exploded under Donald Trump’s brutal crackdown.

Despite polls showing growing public disgust with viral videos of heavily armed officers making violent arrests,
the administration is doubling down on policies aimed at filling immigration jails and detention camps with up to 100,000 people at any given time
— a massive expansion from the current incarcerating capacity of 41,500 people.

Along with tax breaks for the wealthy,
the “big, beautiful bill” signed by Trump on July 4 provides an unprecedented $170 billion in funding for mass deportation, incarceration, and border enforcement.

That includes the approval of a historic $75 billion in taxpayer spending for hiring 10,000 additional immigration police within the country’s interior and rapidly expanding jails and shocking detention camps.

The Detention Watch Network,
a coalition of detention accountability and abolition groups,
lists the new concentration camp in the Everglades alongside 10 other immigration detention facilities that activists are monitoring across multiple states.

While Democratic lawmakers attempt to access the facilities to inspect for human rights abuses,
the Detention Watch Network and 100 allied groups are launching the "Communities Not Cages"
campaign to highlight local efforts to oppose detention expansion and shut immigration jails down.

The facilities tracked by the campaign include
🔸Central Louisiana ICE Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana,
a rural and sprawling immigration prison operated by the private prison company GEO Group,

where detainees face deportation hundreds of miles away from family and legal support.

The Palestine liberation activist Mahmoud Khalil was recently released from the facility after being targeted by the Trump administration for organizing protests against the genocide in Gaza.

Activists also have their sights on
🔸Krome Detention Center in southern Florida,
where at least three people died while incarcerated,

including a 44-year-old Ukrainian refugee who, according to his family, entered Krome with no preexisting medical conditions.

The facility is notorious for overcrowding and harsh crackdowns on protests by detainees demanding their right to livable conditions.

Multiple studies by physicians and human rights groups found that dozens of people have died preventable deaths in jails and prisons run by ICE and its contractors in the past.
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