Trump admn using federal prisons to detain unauthorised immigrants

US President Donald Trump’s administration is using federal prisons to detain some people arrested in its immigration crackdown, the federal Bureau of Prisons said on Friday, returning to a strategy that drew allegations of mistreatment during his first term.

In a statement issued, the prison agency said it was assisting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement by housing detainees and would continue to support their law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration’s policy objectives. The Bureau of Prisons declined to say how many immigration detainees it is taking in, or which prison facilities are being used.

“For privacy, safety and security reasons, we do not comment on the legal status of an individual, nor do we specify the legal status of individuals assigned to any particular facility, including numbers and locations,” the agency said.

Three people familiar with the matter said federal jails in Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia and federal prisons in Atlanta, Leavenworth, Kansas, and Berlin, New Hampshire, were among the facilities being used. The people were not authorised to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity. The Miami jail alone was set to receive up to 500 detainees, the people said.

An influx of immigration detainees could put yet more strain on the Bureau of Prisons, which has been plagued by severe understaffing, violence and other problems. The agency is seeking to temporarily move employees from its other facilities to help with immigrant detention.

The Bureau of Prisons is the justice department’s biggest agency with more than 30,000 employees, 122 facilities, 155,000 inmates and an annual budget of about 8 billion dollars. In December, the agency said it was closing one prison and idling six prison camps to address “significant challenges”.