End Abuse in Our Privatized Immigrant-Only Prisons

End Abuse in Our Privatized Immigrant-Only Prisons

End Abuse in Our Privatized Immigrant-Only Prisons

A recent investigation published by The Nation found that dozens of men had died in disturbing circumstances in privatized, immigrant-only prisons. Join The Nation, the ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and Grassroots Leadership in calling on the White House to end this shadow private prison system.

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What’s going on?

The federal prison system currently includes 11 prisons called Criminal Alien Requirement facilities. Built to house non-citizens convicted of federal crimes—many of whom were arrested for simply crossing the border—CAR prisons are managed on a day-to-day basis not by the Bureau of Prisons, but by private companies. These privatized facilities are held to lower standards than others in the BOP system—with devastating results for the men held there.

These men are suffering from shocking neglect of their health. For an investigation published in The Nation, reporter Seth Freed Wessler obtained 9,000 pages of healthcare records from these immigrant-only prisons. Medical doctors who Wessler asked to examine the records said that in one third of the reviewable cases, inadequate medical care likely contributed to premature deaths. Men sick with cancer, HIV/AIDS, mental disabilities, and liver and heart disease faced critical delays in obtaining care that may have saved their lives.

A previous report published by the ACLU also found widespread abuse and neglect within CAR prisons, and further confirms that the United States must end this privatized, immigrant-only prison system.

What can I do?

We must put a stop to the grave abuses of the CAR facilities. The Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, a bipartisan group tasked with developing practical, data-driven policy changes in our federal corrections system, recommended a large package of legislative and executive reforms that will substantially reduce the number of people in BOP custody—so we don’t need to build more poorly managed prisons.

We’ve joined with the ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and Grassroots Leadership to call on the Bureau of Prisons to adhere to these recommendations as well as to cease new solicitations for CAR prisons contracts and immediately phase-out all existing CAR prisons. Sign our petition and share it on Twitter and Facebook.

Read More

For more on these prisons, read Seth Freed Wessler’s investigation and check out our explanation of how it came to be.

Disobey authoritarians, support The Nation

Over the past year you’ve read Nation writers like Elie Mystal, Kaveh Akbar, John Nichols, Joan Walsh, Bryce Covert, Dave Zirin, Jeet Heer, Michael T. Klare, Katha Pollitt, Amy Littlefield, Gregg Gonsalves, and Sasha Abramsky take on the Trump family’s corruption, set the record straight about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s catastrophic Make America Healthy Again movement, survey the fallout and human cost of the DOGE wrecking ball, anticipate the Supreme Court’s dangerous antidemocratic rulings, and amplify successful tactics of resistance on the streets and in Congress.

We publish these stories because when members of our communities are being abducted, household debt is climbing, and AI data centers are causing water and electricity shortages, we have a duty as journalists to do all we can to inform the public.

In 2026, our aim is to do more than ever before—but we need your support to make that happen. 

Through December 31, a generous donor will match all donations up to $75,000. That means that your contribution will be doubled, dollar for dollar. If we hit the full match, we’ll be starting 2026 with $150,000 to invest in the stories that impact real people’s lives—the kinds of stories that billionaire-owned, corporate-backed outlets aren’t covering. 

With your support, our team will publish major stories that the president and his allies won’t want you to read. We’ll cover the emerging military-tech industrial complex and matters of war, peace, and surveillance, as well as the affordability crisis, hunger, housing, healthcare, the environment, attacks on reproductive rights, and much more. At the same time, we’ll imagine alternatives to Trumpian rule and uplift efforts to create a better world, here and now. 

While your gift has twice the impact, I’m asking you to support The Nation with a donation today. You’ll empower the journalists, editors, and fact-checkers best equipped to hold this authoritarian administration to account. 

I hope you won’t miss this moment—donate to The Nation today.

Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel 

Editor and publisher, The Nation

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