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Curbing the Abuse of LGBT Immigrants in Detention
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Curbing the Abuse of LGBT Immigrants in Detention

As long as Congress continues to require ICE to detain 34,000 people daily in order to fill an arbitrary quota, LGBT immigrants will continue to be vulnerable to abuse in detention.

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idea_bulbThe U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, has taken commendable steps to improve the immigration detention system, including an automated tool to improve transparency and uniformity in detention-custody decisions and recent guidance on prosecutorial discretion issued by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. However, a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request submitted by the Center for American Progress on October 8, 2014, revealed that these measures are ineffective at protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, immigrants, who DHS recognizes as a “special vulnerability” category. As long as Congress continues to require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to keep an arbitrary quota of 34,000 immigrants in detention daily, LGBT immigrants are vulnerable to the inherent health and safety risks that detention poses.

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