[W]idespread and increasingly systematic human rights violations committed against migrants by State officials, criminals and private citizens have not only grown into a major global governance challenge, but have become one of the greatest human tragedies of our time.

Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Children in cages. Children separated from their parents and ‘lost’ in the system. Endless solitary confinement. Women forced to undergo unneeded hysterectomies. Racism and other discriminatory policies. Systematic sexual abuse. Denial of access to life-saving medication, let alone other forms of medical treatment, including COVID-19 precautions, testing, or vaccines. No heat in the winter, heatstroke in the summer. Deaths. No access, let alone right, to an attorney. Each of these human rights violations was perpetrated this year by U.S. officials in immigration prisons.

At the southern border, migrants are held in tents. In Missouri, where I practice and teach, migrants are held in local jails. Many migrants are also held in Federal Bureau of Prisons Criminal Alien Requirement (“CAR”) prisons. CAR prisons hold only non-citizens convicted of federal immigration offenses and are operated by for-profit companies instead of being run by the Bureau of Prisons itself. Other migrants are held in state and federal prisons.

The number of migrants subject to human rights violations in the United States is staggering. The United States caged over 1.3 million migrant women, children, and men in 2019. In April 2021 alone, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) took more than 178,000 migrants into custody. Comparatively, 60,000 people were detained in all of 2020 for non-immigration federal criminal charges. Given the scope of the ongoing terrible things in immigration prisons, many, including the United Nations, are pushing the United States to abolish immigration prisons altogether. However, based on its response to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s recommendations from the Universal Periodic Review of the United States in March 2021, the Biden administration has made clear that it not interested in abolition, not even on the world stage. Instead of pushing for a path toward abolishing immigration prisons, the new administration responded with a mix of false hopes and outright lies.

This essay begins with an overview of the U.S. immigration prison system, arguing that the system is irreparably broken, horrifyingly expensive to maintain, and serves no purpose other than to perpetuate abuse and discrimination against migrants. The essay then summarizes international human rights law’s prohibition of all immigration prisons. Lastly, the essay explores the recommendations on immigration prisons from all three Universal Periodic Reviews of the United States. This final Part also explores U.S. responses to those recommendations, arguing that the Biden administration missed an important opportunity to step up as global leader and promote the human rights of migrants by forging a path towards abolition of immigration prisons.