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TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, collected data on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities for the 2015 fiscal year.
More about TRAC: These open government advocates are suing the federal government for access to immigration data
They sued ICE for information about how many people were booked into and out of their facilities. In one year, 325,209 people were processed through these facilities — mostly to be deported, but also because they were released on bond or because they were found to have a lawful right to stay in the country. At the end of the year, almost 40,000 people were in ICE custody.
ICE used 637 different facilities to hold, detain or process people. Of those who were being detained, 72 percent had been held in facilities operated by private companies.
"These are the people who get exposed to their detention practices," says TRAC co-director Susan B. Long, including those of the private companies running many of the facilities.
They estimate that 15 percent of migrants were held at facilities operated by the GEO Group and 10 percent by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Another 10 percent were at facilities owned by Ahtna Corporation.
The caveat here is that ICE provided TRAC with incomplete data, so these are likely underestimations, they say. What is clear is that hundreds of thousands of people are processed and detained in these facilities, many of which are privately operated, each year.
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