Earlier this spring, Dalton residents Jose Arias-Tovar and his teenage daughter, Ximena, were both housed in Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, one of the largest immigration jails in the country.
Being reunited with his wife and children wasn’t the only reason Arias-Tovar said he was happy to be released on bond last month. There was also relief at getting out of what he described as a facility so overcrowded that he was forced to sleep on a bare concrete floor about half the time during his four-week detention.
As ICE has stepped up arrests since the start of Donald Trump’s second administration, including of immigration violators who do not have other criminal charges or convictions, space inside the agency’s detention facilities is running scarce. That appears to be the case at Stewart, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
“The people actually try to fight to get a bed, because 30 people just sleeping in the concrete floor, so the situation there is crazy,” Arias-Tovar said in English during a recent interview. “Two toilets, two showers for many persons. You got people, they take a shower at 3 a.m. because they don’t have time to do it in the day.”
He added: “They don’t have enough food … It’s too much people now.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
As of June 9, the average daily detainee population inside the South Georgia jail stood at 1,828, according to ICE data collected by the TRAC. Stewart’s capacity is 1,752 detainees.
Nationwide, the federal government is currently holding more than 50,000 people in ICE detention, a roughly 25% increase since January. That far exceeds the 41,500 cap for which the agency funded.
Amilcar Valencia helps lead El Refugio, a Stewart County nonprofit that works to support immigrant detainees and their loved ones. He said his organization is “consistently” hearing about Stewart detainees being housed in rooms with 100 people but only 60 or 70 beds.
“I mean, it’s just horrible,” he said. “The overcrowded conditions just make it hard for anyone who is detained there.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Brian Todd, a spokesperson of CoreCivic, the private prison operator that runs Stewart, said in a statement that detainees receive “three nutritious meals a day,” and that all have access to a bed. He added that the company adheres to all applicable federal detention standards, but did not dispute the Stewart detainee inmate population numbers presented by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We care deeply about treating people in our facilities humanely and providing them with a safe, clean and dignified environment as they prepare for the next steps in their immigration process,” Todd said.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
More pressure on Stewart and other detention facilities is likely forthcoming. The Department of Homeland Security recently confirmed that the administration increased its immigration arrest quota, from 1,800 to 3,000 people each day.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
The GOP legislative package currently working its way through Congress seeks to infuse the Trump administration with significantly more funding to carry out its mass deportations pledge. The House-passed budget bill would unlock more than $150 billion in additional funding over five years for the Department of Homeland Security, including $59 billion for immigration detention and transportation.
It has been confirmed that bigger detention infrastructure will be coming to Georgia.
Last week, local officials in Charlton County near the Georgia-Florida border approved plans to expand an existing ICE jail into the nation’s largest, with capacity to hold nearly 3,000 detainees.
“With this expansion, Georgia will strengthen its status as a national leader in the fight to secure our southern border,” U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican, said in a statement.
The enlarged facility in Folkston “will bring jobs and economic growth to our region, and I will continue to support our brave ICE agents as they seek to restore law and order,” the congressman added.
The Trump administration has also turned to federal prisons to hold some ICE detainees, the Bureau of Prisons said in February.
In Atlanta’s federal penitentiary, the number of people detained over immigration violations increased from five in February to 51 in early June, according to ICE data collected by TRAC.
Attorney: No access to bonds for people who immigrated legally
Among the immigrants newly targeted for arrest, detention and deportation are people who entered the country with authorization in recent years, availing themselves of humanitarian pathways created under Biden. That includes roughly 950,000 immigrants who had used a government app to schedule appointments with federal officers and legally crossed the border.
According to Marty Rosenbluth, one of the sole private immigration attorneys working in the remote part of Georgia where Stewart is located, immigrants who arrived in the U.S. via the app are not able to apply for bail when detained by ICE, prolonging their stays in custody. Some of his clients find themselves in that situation.
“It’s completely counterintuitive,” Rosenbluth said. “You try to enter legally, and then this is the catch.”
Immigrants deemed ineligible for bonds must wait in detention for their case to come before a judge inside Stewart’s immigration court, located in the same compound as the detention center. And because the number of detainees is steadily climbing, wait times for hearings are also going up, Rosenbluth said.
“ICE is using incarceration as a litigation strategy,” he added. “They’re trying to incarcerate people under these horrendous conditions so that they just want to quit on their case, give up and go home.”
Earlier this month, the Stewart Detention Center made news when staff found a Mexican detainee dead by apparent suicide. Before the Mexican man’s passing, there had been two confirmed deaths by suicide at Stewart since ICE began detaining immigrants there in 2006.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
AJC video producer Miasarah Lai contributed to this report.
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