Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act (HR1215)

Some 28,700 immigration detainees are in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) every day.1 These detainees are not held at a central location, rather they are housed in a patchwork of some 353 facilities, including jails and private for-profit prisons.2 There has been a rapid increase in the number of detainees in custody at these various sites, an increase of 61% from January 2006 to December 2007.3 While there are laws that are enforceable regarding the treatment of criminal inmates in jails and prisons, there are no such codified guidelines for immigration detainees.