A growing number of immigrants in the United States are being incarcerated in detention centers for increasingly extended periods of time, and without being afforded the legal protections given to criminals, according to a recent report issued by the American Immigration Council, VOA news reports.
The report, entitled “The Landscape of Immigration Detention in the United States,” says the number of people imprisoned for violating U.S. immigration laws has increased “more than fivefold in the past two decades,” from an average daily detention population of less than 7,000 in 1994 to more than 44,000 in 2017.
The rise in immigration detention temporarily dipped in 2014, even though the administration of President Barack Obama increased efforts to deport immigrant criminal offenders and recent border crossers. The Migration Policy Institute attributed this temporary decline in part to improved economic conditions in Mexico and reduced post-recession job demand in the United States.