Hoosiers, like other communities across the United States who are witnessing the unlawful detention of our immigrant neighbors, are speaking out. NIJC joined Indiana and national immigrant rights advocates to decry the massive detention expansion. Indiana lawmakers also have expressed alarm: “The fact that ICE has detained so many individuals that they now need to expand detention space in Indiana is disturbing,” said Congressman André Carson of Indiana’s 7th District. “Without due process, anyone and everyone is at risk, including U.S. citizens.” State Representative Gregory W. Porter, who represents Indianapolis in the Indiana General Assembly, opposed the use of the Miami Correctional Facility to detain people for ICE, raising concern about the misuse of resources and funds while social services are being slashed and people are being laid off in Indiana. The dramatic expansion of ICE detention in Indiana illustrates the critical need for state and local government protections from federal overreach. NIJC is grateful for Illinois members of Congress speaking out forcefully in support of local laws that govern how police interact with Illinois communities, and calling for the administration to end its unlawful assault on state and local authority. The administration’s announcement of the new detention plans in Indiana mirrored the media spectacle it created with the opening of the Everglades detention camp in Florida, using dehumanizing nicknames and contrived images to mock people’s suffering and distract from due process and human rights violations that are rampant in ICE detention. “We are deeply concerned and disturbed by the dramatic expansion in Indiana, but also by the cavalier way they are approaching this, by applying alliterated names as if this makes it somehow less cruel,” NIJC’s Indiana-based National Director of Legal Services Lisa Koop told the Associated Press. NIJC Associate Director of Policy Jesse Franzblau told the IndyStar the new detention camps signify “a new frontier” in the U.S. government’s criminalization of immigrant communities. The Trump administration has also dramatically increased federal criminal prosecutions against people for immigration offenses, charging and imprisoning more people for simply entering the United States or reentering after removal without permission. New legislation proposed in Congress would add harsher punishments and lifetime prison sentences to the same statutes behind the family separation crisis that targeted asylum seekers during Trump’s first term. In a new policy brief, NIJC and our partners describe the devasting impact of immigration prosecutions, which fuel mass incarceration, overwhelm the courts, waste taxpayer funds, and enrich private prisons. | 
