U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced that it will build at least 5 new detention centers. So far, they are scheduled to open in Florida, Texas, New Jersey, California, and Illinois. The new detention centers will be privately owned and administered and are, according to Detention Watch Network, a watchdog group, are the result of $20 million in lobbying from private detention firms. ICE has also asked Congress for more funding for ankle tracking bracelets to be worn by illegal immigrants who have been caught, slated for deportation, and not detained. ICE’s request amounts to $72 million for the ankle bracelets, up from $69 million in 2010. The agency estimates that this will enable them to equip 2,500 more illegal immigrants with the ankle bracelets.

ICE has been under fire by civil rights, human rights, and immigrant advocacy groups for their detention practices. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), among others, have released reports condemning the agency for not allowing detained illegal immigrants basic human rights and due process. IACHR said that ICE acts as “judge and jury” for illegal immigrants, doesn’t allow them access to lawyers, family members, or anyone else that would give them recourse to any sort of appeal. IACHR condemns ICE for treating these illegal immigrants, many of which are refugees and/or asylees they argue, as criminal prisoners by dressing them in prison garb and not allowing them outside for recreation. Furthermore, ICE periodically moves immigrants from facility to facility so that they cannot be regularly visited by family or lawyers. The agency has said that these new facilities will offer improved accommodations to detainees.

Critics claim that the new detention centers, despite being a result of heavy lobbying, are the result of ICE’s controversial program Secure Communities. The program takes fingerprints collected when any suspect is booked into a county or local lockup and checks them against a federal database to screen for illegal immigrants. ICE told participating law enforcement agencies that they would be focusing on deporting “serious criminals” but since the program began in 2008, about one-third of those deported as a result have had no criminal record and ICE has been quickly collecting large amounts of illegal immigrants.

In response to the criticism, ICE director John Morton released a memo that gives deportation priorities to criminal aliens and de-prioritizes 19 categories of illegal immigrants including college students, those brought to the U.S. as minors, those married to a U.S. citizen, and those with good standing or family connections in their respective communities. The memo has drawn fire from the far-right political base that argues that the Obama administration is trying to enforce the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform before they pass through Congress by getting enforcement agencies like ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ease up on deportations of non-criminals. DHS secretary Janet Napolitano recently told Congress that her agency will not deport those who would benefit from the passage of the DREAM Act, which amounts to about 800,000 illegal immigrants. Both Napolitano and Morton cite finances as their reasons for de-prioritizing non-criminal aliens, arguing that with limited financial resources, it makes more sense to focus on those who are a threat to their communities and the nation.