Caitlin Dickerson

And then a few weeks after I started reporting on this issue, I started to hear that people were going into their ICE check-ins once again and having this normal interaction where they would tell the officer what they'd been up to, where they were living, and be told to come back in six months or a year.

And I asked what the difference was, and it was just that the detention facilities in Georgia had filled up in the intervening time.

So really, who was being arrested and who wasn't had nothing to do with the circumstances of their case, with whether they were a legitimate threat to the public or not.

It was

Is there a bed to put them in?

And so I think the Trump administration really wants to eliminate the possibility that limited bed space could hold them back.

So, you know, immigration detention is legally not actually meant to be punitive, which is a little bit ironic given what we know about the health and safety conditions in detention centers.

Lots of people are dying in detention more than in years past, which is a huge concern for people.

But there's also problems with access to legal representation with adequate food and sanitation and medical care.

So the Trump administration is very much seeing this dramatic expansion of the detention system as an important part of immigration enforcement.

That was a head-scratcher.

It was one of the only caps that existed in the entire bill.

Everything else seems to be about sort of limitless spending.

So there's been a lot of churn on the immigration court since Trump took office.

They've fired dozens of judges, mostly ones, it seems, who were granting too many requests for relief, requests to remain in the United States.

and replacing them with people who they think will be more harsh.

And you're seeing that reflected in the denial rates.

So overall, asylum denial rates were around 50% when Biden left office, and now they're up to 84%.

Immigration courts are a kind of choke point for deportations because you've got someone in custody, but if they have access to a legal remedy, then they're going to fight their case.

And sometimes those cases take years.