In late January, federal agents arrested Wilson Velásquez outside of the Honduran immigrant’s church in Tucker — a first sign of the expanded immigration enforcement dragnet under President Donald Trump’s second administration. Until Trump’s return to the White House last month, arrests in or near “sensitive” locations such as churches, hospitals or schools were deemed largely off limits.
Instead of returning home with his wife, Kenia, and the couple’s three children after the church service, Velásquez was detained in Atlanta and then transferred to one of the nation’s largest immigrant prisons: Stewart Detention Center, in rural South Georgia. A reported increase in bookings there is reflective of surging detainee populations in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities nationwide, as vigorous enforcement places more immigrants in the detention-to-deportation pipeline.
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Kenia Velásquez would like to visit her husband in detention, but says she has no way to safely travel the roughly 150 miles that separate metro Atlanta and Stewart County. Other family members of newly detained migrants have made the trip to South Georgia. Over 70 people passed through El Refugio, a nonprofit that provides support and hospitality to loved ones visiting Stewart detainees, during the first two weekends in February.
That’s a “large increase” relative to weeks prior to the new administration, according to Amilcar Valencia, El Refugio’s co-founder.
“There’s a feeling of helplessness,” Valencia said. “People feel that there is no opportunity to get their loved ones released. They’re afraid they themselves could be detained as well. So, it’s a very difficult situation.”
Credit: Lautaro Grinspan
Credit: Lautaro Grinspan
ICE did not respond to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution request for the number of immigrants currently being held at Stewart.
Complicating Stewart detainees’ efforts to fight deportation is that, as of last fall, there are no more providers of pro bono legal representation at the immigration court inside the detention center. One of the sole private immigration attorneys working in this remote part of the state is Marty Rosenbluth, who says he has received a surge of calls in recent weeks from people looking to hire him. But he doesn’t think he will be able to help much.
According to Rosenbluth, the “overwhelming majority” of newly detained immigrants are being put in expedited removal, a mechanism that subjects people who are in the country unlawfully to a streamlined removal process.
Under former President Joe Biden, federal immigration officials were only allowed to use expedited removal on unauthorized immigrants detained within 100 miles of an international border and who had been in the country for less than two weeks. As mandated by a Trump executive order, the sped-up deportations will apply to unauthorized immigrants anywhere in the U.S. who have been present in the country for less than two years.
“I don’t know if I can actually get (prospective clients) a hearing in immigration court,” Rosenbluth said. “The old rules just really don’t seem to apply.
“I probably said ‘I don’t have a clue’ more in the past two or three weeks than I’ve said in 16 years of practice. I really don’t have solutions for folks right now.”
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Capacity ‘just isn’t there’
As Trump made pledges of mass deportations a cornerstone of his winning campaign, experts said the country’s immigration system was too under-resourced to yield millions of deportations per year. The United States' immigrant detention infrastructure exemplifies that dynamic.
On the first day of the Trump administration, the 1,700-bed Stewart Detention Center was already at 89% capacity, giving federal officials limited room to continue sending immigrants to South Georgia for detention.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
As early as the first week of February, space at ICE detention facilities nationwide reached 109% capacity, with the agency holding close to 42,000 immigrant detainees, according to internal Department of Homeland Security data reviewed by CBS News.
On paper, ICE currently has the budget to detain about 41,000 people at any given time across its network of for-profit prisons and county jails.
Even with an expanded use of expedited removal, ICE will likely have to detain some of the people it arrests for weeks and even months, experts say, while the agency makes the necessary travel arrangements and completes all the paperwork to carry out deportations. Other countries’ refusal to accept deportation flights can account for some of the lengthier stays in detention.
The Trump administration has taken several steps to avoid being stymied on immigration enforcement because of capacity issues. It has begun flying unauthorized migrants to a detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, although that effort has already run into judicial restrictions. In a return to a policy that drew allegations of mistreatment in Trump’s first term, authorities are also detaining some people arrested by ICE in federal prisons, including in Atlanta.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
According to border czar Tom Homan, the administration is also actively encouraging more sheriffs across the country to provide jail space to detain immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. And the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border means the military can get involved in helping secure “appropriate detention space,” the White House said.
Still, it appears that detention beds aren’t opening fast enough. Since Trump took office, at least 461 migrants have been released back into the country, in part because of space constraints.
“They don’t have the capacity to deport millions of people,” Rosenbluth said. “The capacity just isn’t there.”
Because they spend so much time working with the immigrant community in Stewart County, Valencia and Rosenbluth are among those most familiar with the detainee population of Georgia’s largest immigration detention facility.
They say the bulk of people who have been sent to the Stewart Detention Center in recent weeks likely don’t have criminal records.
Trump and many of the officials in his administration have repeatedly stated that ICE would prioritize unauthorized immigrants who have committed serious crimes for detention and deportation. But officials are also putting considerable pressure on ICE field offices across the country to post growing arrests numbers, including via quotas, according to reporting from The Washington Post and NBC News.
Valencia says that is likely leading agents to be more indiscriminate in whom they go after.
According to Rosenbluth, the first wave of arrests under Trump targeted “low-hanging fruit,” or immigrants whose whereabouts were being electronically monitored by ICE.
When they encounter immigrants without legal authorization at the border or in the interior of the country, federal agents prioritize individuals deemed to be public safety threats for detention. Officers can use their discretion and release migrants who do not have serious criminal convictions, though they can choose to continue monitoring them through a range of means, including ankle monitors or a phone app.
Rosenbluth says some of the new Stewart detainees received a message while they were home, alerting them that something was wrong with their tracking devices and asking them to come out so it could be fixed. They were arrested when they complied, he said, adding ICE might resort to that maneuver if they lack a warrant to enter migrants’ homes directly.
Among Rosenbluth’s new clients is a man who had been living in the U.S. under electronic monitoring for five years.
“What they’re trying to do is create fear in the community,” Rosenbluth said.
Credit: Courtesy of El Refugio
Credit: Courtesy of El Refugio
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