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“AB 32 was introduced at the height of the Trump era, when there was an attempt to aggressively expand immigration detention through private corporations,” said Jackie Gonzalez, policy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates, who advised legislators drafting the bill. “We pushed really hard.”
The news comes as detention facility operators face an increase in numbers of detained immigrants with last month’s expiration of pandemic-era border restrictions under Title 42. Nearly 30,000 immigrants were detained as of June 4, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University, up 40% from a month prior. DHS cleared detention space ahead of Title 42’s expiration.
People in ICE detention are not serving time for crimes but are held while an immigration judge decides if they should be deported. Detention levels peaked at more than 55,000 under the Trump administration and dropped in 2021, amid the pandemic, to a low of 13,000.
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