Dignity Not Detention
It’s time to restore trust between law enforcement and the immigrant community. Maryland must act now to stop partnering with ICE to target and deport immigrants and their families.
No one should profit off of the incarceration of another human being. Maryland legislators must ensure that no town, county or corporation is profiting from immigrants in ICE detention.
The Dignity Not Detention Act will keep ICE and its contractors out of Maryland, protecting immigrant communities that have been, and can be, impacted by ICE’s inhumane detention center practices.
We have an opportunity and an urgent responsibility to end our participation in this unjust system that tears families apart and kills people. Right now, people are suffering and dying in immigration jails. With medical neglect, isolation, and abuse, there is nothing humane about detention. ICE wants to make the community suffer by increasing the number of detention beds in our state. If ICE builds it, they’ll fill it.
The Dignity Not Detention Act would do the following:
Cuts off state and local governments’ role in either setting up a facility or participating in the continued operation of detention facilities.
Promotes transparency and makes sure that the public is adequately informed if any plans for a new detention facility are to take place.
Prevents state or local entities from entering into any new contracts or renewing any existing contract for immigrant detention. For local entities that already have an existing contract, they must exercise their contract’s termination provision and terminate the contract by June 2021.
Right now, Maryland doesn’t currently have any private prisons. The possible jail in Baltimore County, and the proposal for a jail in Sudlersville were just ideas, but proof that the threat of detention center expansion is constant. This bill is a proactive step to ensure that those ideas don’t become reality, that no place in Maryland has to sell out to a private prison company just to stay afloat.