By Morgan Tiergarten
October 2, 2029
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez signed an executive order yesterday that will close all immigrant detention centers within one year.
The White House announced the order after months of quiet negotiations with the private prison companies that operate the facilities. In exchange for allowing the government to exit the contracts and not pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, the companies will not face criminal liability for abetting the Trump administration in its ethnic cleansing campaign during the Fascist Period.
“This was a hard decision, but this administration ultimately thought it was more important that noncitizens going through immigration proceedings do so in the community than to keep these prisons open any longer than necessary, said U.S. Immigration and Guestwork Secretary Joaquin Castro.
During the Trump years, international institutions and human rights watchdogs labeled the facilities “concentration camps.” More than 200 people died in them during the Fascist Period, and thousands of others were subjected to inhumane conditions of confinement. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the private prison operators this year so far.
Castro cautioned that there may be more stringent monitoring of people who have criminal convictions or who would try to evade deportation. However, unless someone is actively serving a criminal sentence, they will remain out of custody as their immigration cases proceed.
“This is the way it should have been happening all along,” said Carmen Ramirez Atencio, director of the Freedom and Dignity Project. “The private prison lobbyists captured our system. We couldn’t be more grateful that the president stood up for our neighbors today.”
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