For more than three years, the federal government — under both the Trump and Biden administrations — fought NPR’s efforts to obtain those records. That opposition continued despite a Biden campaign promise to “demand transparency in and independent oversight over ICE.”
I mean, I can see why. They make both administrations look awful.
“These reports are chilling. They are damning,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project and an expert on ICE detention, when NPR shared the reports’ findings. “They really show how the government’s own inspectors can see the abuses and the level of abuses that are happening in ICE detention.”
The government, whether it was under Trump or Biden, knew all about the abuses going on in these camps, and their response wasn’t to arrest and prosecute these guards or to shut down these facilities, they just tried to cover them up. It’s incredibly disappointing to say the least.