DHS ends free phone calls for illegal immigrants in detention

Homeland Security said Tuesday that it has ended its program to allow detained migrants more than eight hours of free phone calls a month, saying it doesn’t have the money to keep it going.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which runs the detention facilities, said it started offering the 520 minutes of free phone calls during the coronavirus pandemic, when it had to curtail in-person visits. But with those visits now back on the table, the phones have to go.

It said it is saving $10.2 million by ending the calls, though ICE said detainees still have free access to pro bono lawyers through tablets, because Congress has allocated money for that.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would gladly reinstate the 520 minutes calling program with adequate appropriated funds — but unfortunately, funding is a continued struggle, and the limited funds available are needed to carry out our congressionally mandated mission,” the agency said.

The end of the phone calls has not sat well with detainees.

Dozens of migrants at two of ICE’s detention facilities in California started on a hunger strike late last week, and restoring the phone calls is one of their demands.

The California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice said 62 detainees at the Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center are on strike.

The hunger strikers want the facilities shut down entirely, according to the collaborative, but in the meantime have issued demands including an end to the use of solitary confinement, more frequent review of their case statuses, and the phone calls.

“Stop charging us to call our families, lawyers and communities,” the list of demands reads.

As of mid-July, ICE had roughly 37,000 migrants in custody.

Nearly 60% of those are recent arrivals caught at the border by Customs and Border Protection who are being detained because they crossed illegally. Most of the others have criminal records that make them too risky to set free.

ICE is also monitoring another 178,000 migrants through smartphones, ankle monitors or other technology, and it has more than 7 million other migrants on its nondetained docket that it is not monitoring closely.

Detaining the migrants makes it more likely they can be deported. Releasing makes it much tougher. Their cases get dropped down on the priority list for immigration courts, and even finding reluctant immigrants out in communities can be time-consuming and expensive.

But immigrant-rights advocates argue against detention and have pushed the Biden administration to shut down some of its facilities.

The agency is currently funded for up to 42,000 detention beds daily, though the acting ICE director has said he could use as many as 50,000 beds.

The 520 minutes of free phone calls started in April 2020.

The minutes could be used for any purpose and were good for domestic and international calls.

Immigrant rights activists say the end to free phone calls has made it tougher to learn about conditions inside detention centers.

Paid phone calls are still available, though activists say the costs can be tough to handle for families whose main breadwinner is often the one being held in detention.