Visualizing thousands of ICE Air transfer routes, including “circular transfers,” new study analyzes depth of retaliation, torture and trafficking resulting from inter-detention transfers
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Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org
OAKLAND, Calif. — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) weaponizes inter-detention transfers of people in its custody to pad the agency’s budget and as a harsh form of retaliation, torture and labor trafficking, according to a new report released today by Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) that visualizes thousands of ICE Air flight routes.
The report tracks 70 unique instances of “circular transfers,” in which individuals are transported, sometimes thousands of miles, between multiple detention facilities before being returned to the same facility they had been detained originally. The findings underscore how ICE, which fails to operationally justify its transfer practices, spends millions of taxpayer dollars annually to senselessly shuffle individuals back and forth under tortuous conditions, often in retaliation against those who speak out against the agency’s abuses.
ICE imposes transfers against individuals or groups in its custody on a daily basis, forcibly placing immigrants into wrist and ankle shackles for the duration of a cruel and isolating process that can stretch across multiple days. According to the report, intra-detention ICE Air flights have increased by 94 percent over the past two years.
“Every single time, they handcuffed me. Every single time, I lost my things. Every single time, I was quarantined,” recalls Tepi Clacson, an asylum seeker from Cameroon who was detained by ICE from 2020-2021, and who ICE circular transferred over 6,000 miles for more than a month. “So, for months, I have been quarantined — it’s like solitary confinement, you only get to leave your cell for one hour a day.”
Describing the process of being transferred, Clacson continued: “Your hands, knees, and legs are chained, and it is so painful throughout your body. I was so hungry but could not contemplate eating because the pain throughout my body was so severe. My head felt like it was going to burst… the noise of the plane was also an issue… My ears developed serious hearing problems. I was constantly worried they might transfer me again. They could do it at any time. Every time ICE called my name, I thought, ‘not again.’ That type of trauma can cause serious mental problems. The kinds of feelings I had in that place, I would not wish that experience upon anyone else. It is torture.”
“Transfers are characteristic of the broader immigration detention system, as they function to deprive immigrants of their dignity, autonomy and freedom of movement,” said Layla Razavi, interim executive director of Freedom for Immigrants. “True to form, ICE cruelly weaponizes transfers to quash organizing efforts inside and outside of detention, and to silence those who speak out against the intolerable conditions of confinement. The cruelty and wastefulness of ICE transfers exposes immigration detention for what it really is — a dehumanizing, torturous and exploitative system of mass incarceration that harms overwhelmingly Black and brown immigrants. Given ICE’s ongoing practice of transferring individuals in retaliation for their organizing efforts, and the financial incentive for conducting such transfers, ending this practice is essential to dismantling the industrial complex surrounding immigration detention and to our ultimate mission of abolishing detention.”
ICE commonly uses transfers to stifle internal organizing, a form of punishment explicitly condoned in the agency’s National Detention Standards. Transfers are damaging to individuals’ court proceedings, and serve to further isolate people in detention from their families and support networks by severing ties, communications and ongoing internal-external advocacy efforts.
Transfers are torturous, as they inflict physical pain and mental anguish upon individuals for specific purposes under an official capacity. Four first-person testimonies featured in the report, including the testimony of Tepi Clacson, illustrate the devastating consequences of transfers on individuals’ well-being and mental health.
Moreover, ICE’s frequent transfers prove vital to the immigration detention system’s reliance on the forced labor of those in ICE custody. Oftentimes, immigrants are effectively trafficked from detention facility to detention facility and immediately put to work upon arrival. As one individual interviewed for the report observed, “I am being trafficked from one facility to another… to clean for $2 a day.”
The interactive visualizations in the report include:
676 instances of domestic ICE transfers documented by FFI from May 2020 to July 2022;
70 unique individuals who underwent “circular transfers” (ending up at the same detention facility where they had been detained initially);
14,000 “domestic shuffle” or intra-detention ICE Air flights from January 2020 to May 2022.
The report also documents how, in the wake of the detention abolition movement's success in terminating local detention contracts (at least 36 contract terminations since 2017), ICE appears to be relying on transfers more frequently to suppress these gains and retaliate against internal-external organizing efforts.
The report provides recommendations to Congress, the Biden-Harris administration and local and state governments to greatly reduce ICE transfers. Given ICE’s ongoing abuse of transfers to suppress advocacy efforts, and the incentive to sustain the agency’s enormous scale of operations and budget through these practices, ending transfers would aid local efforts working toward the just closures of detention facilities, as well as support FFI’s ultimate mission of abolishing immigration detention.
The report is accompanied by the launch of FFI’s new Nationwide Detention Facility Resource Directory, which offers facility-specific information to loved ones and organizers.
Read the full report here.
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Report authors and directly impacted individuals who have experienced ICE transfers are available for interview. Email media@freedomforimmigrants.org.
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Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) is devoted to abolishing immigration detention, while ending the isolation of people currently suffering in this profit-driven system. FFI monitors the human rights abuses faced by immigrants detained by ICE through a national hotline and network of volunteer detention visitors, while promoting community-based services that welcome immigrants into the social fabric of the United States.