The United States operates the largest immigrant detention infrastructure in the world detaining over 450,000 individuals annually. The expansion of the system was due to the arbitrary bed quota also known as the “detention bed mandate” introduced in 2009 by Senator Byrd, who implemented the following language into the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2010: “...funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 33,400 detention beds.”
According to the Detention Watch Network, the bed quota was removed from the language that outlines the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement yet the number of people currently held in immigration detention has far exceeded the 34,000 quota. An underlying network of local quotas remain written into detention contracts requiring ICE to pay for a minimum number of beds at key detention centers, most of which are run by private prison corporations.
Over 70% of the 45,000 beds currently contracted by ICE are in private prisons, such as CoreCivic (formerly CCA) and the GEO Group who both lobby for immigration reform that bolsters their bottom lines. This ultimatum to maximize profit perverts the social mission of incarceration. The quota has prevented ICE from exercising discretion and developing alternatives to detention that would allow those who pose no public risk to be able to stay with their families while awaiting immigration court hearings. The decision regarding whether or not someone should be released on bond is budgetary, not judicial. As a result, thousands of asylum seekers, women and children, and refugees are being detained and moved from one detention center to the next without bond. The mandate is targeting innocent lives while pushing the wrong idea that moving from one country to another is a criminal act that should be punished with incarceration.
The project 34,000 Pillows is an ongoing and participatory project that illuminates and challenges the monetary gain of this system and defends the individuals whose lives are being traded for private prison dollars. In an attempt to represent the “silenced body” of the immigrant and the budgetary language of the quota, Díaz Lewis are creating pillows from clothing donated by undocumented immigrants and their allies.