New report, Hiding in Plain Sight, reveals local jails’ essential role in Trump’s mass deportation strategy and how counties can stop it

The new report explains how the Trump administration is using a longstanding loophole to circumvent sanctuary policies and obscure the full scale of its immigration actions.

July 30, 2025

This morning, the Prison Policy Initiative released Hiding in Plain Sight, a report revealing the crucial role that locally-run jails are playing in President Trump’s program of mass deportation — and why states and counties must do more to end cooperation. Building on the organization’s work explaining how county jails enable state and federal incarceration, this report breaks down the complicated overlap between local criminal justice and immigration, and offers detailed data tables showing the level of involvement in every state and in specific jails.

Key findings include:

• The Trump administration is circumventing city and county sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It accomplishes this through a longstanding loophole: ICE and other federal agencies can refer people for federal prosecution on immigration-related “crimes” and thus use local jails’ contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service in sanctuary cities, counties, and states. In doing so, the Trump administration is transforming what are normally civil immigration matters into more serious federal crimes.
• ICE data doesn’t show the full scale of immigrant detention in the U.S. While ICE detention data recorded 57,200 people on average in June 2025, the true count of people detained shows the overall crimmigration system is 45% larger, at around 83,400 people. That’s because ICE data does not account for people facing criminal immigration charges (as explained above), nor does it account for people held on ICE detainers, in some state detention facilities, or in overnight hold rooms.
• Jails and police departments play a key role in criminalizing immigration by detaining people until ICE agents can make an arrest. ICE has capitalized on local detention of immigrants — often on minor charges or charges that would not lead to jail time for U.S. citizens (such as driving without a license) — to not only make more arrests, but to enhance the appearance of targeting “criminals.” Arrests in jails comprise 45% of ICE arrests since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Many cities and states have tried to offer sanctuary for immigrants by refusing to rent jail space to ICE and opting out of the 287(g) program, but it is not enough,” said report author Jacob Kang-Brown. “The Trump administration is leveraging jails at a new scale, using local contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and existing policing practices in order to expand detention.”

For reporters who want to dig deeper into these trends in their own counties and states, the report includes data tables showing:

• How many people are being held for ICE and the U.S. Marshals in over 600 local jails (and over 150 other facilities), the change in these populations from January to April 2025, and the share of all detained immigrants in every state being held by jails.
• The rate of ICE arrests happening in jails, compared to other locations, in every state.
• The number of immigrants arrested by the U.S. Marshals on various charge types over time — showing that a quickly-growing share of these people are being booked on charges related to their immigration status.
• The per-diem payments by the U.S. Marshals to hundreds of local jails in exchange for housing immigrants and other federal pretrial detainees.

The report concludes by urging counties to end all of their collaborations with federal immigration detention agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, which has contracts with nearly 1,000 jails nationwide. Via their jails, local governments are — intentionally or not — providing the infrastructure for a massive attack on immigrants. But by resisting cooperation with President Trump’s racist deportation machine, counties and states also have the power to contain it.

The full report is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/jails_immigration.html

Prison Policy Initiative and MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project release new guiding principles for parole reform

Organizations working to reform parole systems in their states are encouraged to sign on to these 16 principles.

by Emmett Sanders, July 10, 2025

Parole systems in America are failing. They’re inaccessible, they’re hard to navigate, they grant parole for far too few people, and those who are paroled are often set up to fail.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Prison Policy Initiative has partnered with the MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project to produce Principles for Parole Reform. This document features 16 guiding principles for advocates to consider when pushing for parole reform in their jurisdictions. Drawing from our own extensive research and advocacy experience, and created with guidance from advocacy organizations across the country, this document reflects dozens of conversations with those most impacted by unjust parole policies: currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families.

The principles cover key areas of parole such as access and eligibility, preparation and process, criteria considerations, parole board composition, revocation hearings, and more. Each principle includes an explanation of why these reforms are necessary, as well as concrete examples of common-sense policies that advocates can draw from when working to implement change.

The problems with parole

Discretionary parole allows states to periodically review incarcerated people’s circumstances with the goal of releasing people who can safely return to their communities. Parole is a vital tool for decarceration, but in its current form, it usually does not achieve its goals.

At its core, discretionary parole is a recognition of the fundamental humanity of those in prison: a promise that, in our society, people are more than their worst moments. However, the distance between the promise of parole and its reality is vast. Parole processes are a minefield of racial disparities, opaque processes, over-politicization, and little representation or assistance for those hoping to make it to the other side of decades of incarceration. Access to parole is limited in some states and nonexistent in others. Where it exists, the process is so complicated and restrictive that only a fraction of those who apply are granted release. Others apply over and over again only to be denied, often for subjective reasons or for things they cannot change. The result of this flawed system is the same throughout the country: Broken promises and prisons bursting at the seams with people who could be safely released.

To learn more about the need for parole reform in the US, please read:

• When parole doesn’t mean release: The senseless “program requirements” keeping people behind bars during a pandemic
• Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences
• Grading the parole release systems of all 50 states
• No Release: Parole grant rates have plummeted in most states since the pandemic started

Making reform a reality

These 16 principles aim to make parole fairer, more accessible, and more transparent for everyone.

We know that varied political realities mean different reforms are possible in different states. Nevertheless, we hope that the principles we offer in this document will serve as a useful guide for advocates across the country looking to close the distance between the promise of discretionary parole and the reality. The 16 principles are listed below, and are explained in more detail on MacArthur Justice Center’s website.

16 guiding principles for parole reform

1. Every incarcerated person should have access to parole release systems.
2. When someone is eligible for parole, there should be an enforceable presumption of release, and parole boards should be required to use forward-looking, objective criteria to justify why release is inappropriate, rather than requiring incarcerated people to justify their fitness for parole.
3. Parole boards should be required to adhere to consistent, clear guidelines about how to make parole release decisions. People denied parole should have the opportunity to challenge the basis on which their denial decision was made.
4. Parole should be granted or denied based on forward-looking, objective factors within the control of the incarcerated person, and should focus exclusively on how a person has grown, changed, or been productive since being incarcerated, rather than the underlying crime of conviction.
5. When a person is denied parole, they should be given specific, actionable changes that they can make to increase their chances of parole in a future hearing. Parole boards should then honor these efforts and grant parole when people have satisfied previously stated requirements.
6. When a person is denied parole, they should be able to appear before the board again for reconsideration within a reasonable amount of time.
7. People who are up for parole and their loved ones and supporters should have the ability to attend parole hearings and speak to the parole board on their behalf.
8. People should have access to counsel at parole hearings and be provided competent, effective, and free counsel that adheres to best practices for indigent defense if they cannot afford it. People should be provided with resources and support to prepare for their parole hearings.
9. Parole Boards should be diverse in their backgrounds, and should include community-based practitioners trained in psychology and rehabilitation, trauma experts, people who are formerly incarcerated, and other experts with the ability to fairly and objectively evaluate candidates for parole. People with backgrounds in law enforcement and corrections should not be the majority of parole board members.
10. Parole Boards should be required to release information publicly about their decisions, including grant rates, the reasons for denial of parole, length of setbacks, and demographic and charge information of people who appear before the parole board.
11. Imposition of conditions, including supervision fees, should be an individualized process that begins with the presumption of no conditions and allows for the removal of conditions that are no longer serving a purpose.
12. People on supervision should have a variety of options for how to check in that allow for minimal disruptions to the re-entry process.
13. Supervision should not be indefinite; no person should be on supervision for the rest of their life after parole release.
14. Parole boards must ensure the due process rights of people facing revocation are protected, including the right to counsel and other safeguards to ensure fair hearings.
15. People on supervision should not be returned to prison solely for non-criminal conduct.
16. The amount of time that can be revoked should be capped and proportionate to the seriousness of the violation.

Join the effort

If your organization works on parole reform and would like to sign on to these principles, you can do so through MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project’s website.

The Court Agrees: In prison, a $15 fine means so much more

The Fourth Circuit has revived an incarcerated person’s lawsuit challenging a $15 fine taken from his account as punishment.

by Regan Huston, July 3, 2025

In August of 2020, Demmerick Brown, a man incarcerated in Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, went to the prison barbershop to get a haircut and a shave. This was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and naturally the barber asked Mr. Brown to remove his protective mask so he could shave his face. The next day, Mr. Brown received a disciplinary ticket fining him $15 for failing to wear a mask.

After a perfunctory disciplinary hearing, Mr. Brown had the money deducted from his trust account. Then, he sued, alleging that he had not been afforded appropriate due process before having his money taken. But the District Court found that he wasn’t entitled to due process. The court said that this was because $15 was too small an amount of money to trigger constitutional protections.

What the court failed to understand is that $15, while just being the cost of a sandwich outside prison walls, represents dozens or hundreds of hours of labor inside, and people rely on the money they make behind bars to fill their basic needs and contact their families.

In 2024, the Prison Policy Initiative filed an Amicus Curae brief in a suit filed by Rights Behind Bars, who represent Demmerick Brown. In our brief, we drew on our years of work studying the economics of life behind bars to help the Fourth Circuit understand that $15 inside doesn’t mean the same thing as $15 does on the outside.

On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit rightfully reaffirmed that incarcerated people deserve due process rights when their money is taken away from them. The opinion cites our brief, concluding that, “Fifteen dollars may be a sum of small consequence outside prison walls, but it is of great significance within them: the amount is more than a week’s worth of wages at Red Onion State Prison where Brown is incarcerated.”

This is one important step in recognizing the lived experiences of people behind bars, and their constitutional rights.

From providing testimony to completing custom research projects, the Prison Policy Initiative is available to help work on projects across all stages of the criminal legal system. Learn more about the work our advocacy department does here, and drop us a line if we can help.

FCC postpones its groundbreaking 2024 rules, allowing excessive phone and video rates to continue

Incarcerated people and their loved ones will continue to be exploited by sheriffs and telecom companies for two more years, while these same interests lobby the FCC to water down its rules.

by Wanda Bertram, July 2, 2025

On October 30, 2025, the FCC approved new “interim” regulations that needlessly raise rate caps.

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission abruptly announced a two-year postponement of rules reducing prison and jail phone rates that it passed unanimously last year in accordance with the Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act. The FCC’s reversal defies the Act, a bipartisan law that gave the agency a deadline (which it is now blowing past) to implement these regulations.

In a statement, FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez blasted the decision, saying the Commission was “shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities at the expense of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones.”

Families should not have to face two more years of being squeezed by telecom companies and the prisons and jails they collude with. Unfortunately, this order means that they will do just that. By kicking implementation of its rules down the line, the FCC is capitulating to a system it has already acknowledged is full of bad incentives.

A gift to sheriffs and prison telecom companies

Why is the FCC changing course on an order that all of its members — including Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr — voted for last year?

Policy TrackerHow Trump is making the criminal legal system worse

In large part, the move is a response to a small group of sheriffs who have lashed out in reaction to its 2024 order. Before the order, companies had been able to offer commissions and other kickbacks to agencies they partnered with (which drove up the prices of phone calls for consumers). The 2024 order barred companies from offering almost all kickbacks and commissions. In retaliation, a handful of sheriffs, most notably the sheriff of Baxter County, Arkansas, have said they will no longer offer phone calls at all.

Additionally, before the order, prison telecom companies provided call monitoring services to prisons and jails that were — inappropriately — paid for via the rates charged to consumers. The new rules triggered some companies and sheriffs to claim that they could not provide these services if families didn’t foot the bill. Piggybacking on these claims, several Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the FCC, arguing that the 2024 order has put police investigations in jeopardy. While the FCC’s 2024 order addressed these concerns, the order yesterday echoes the language in the lawsuit.

What this means for incarcerated people and their families

The 2024 order technically went into effect earlier this year, but it granted prisons and jails with active contracts an extension of up to one year (or to the end of their contracts, whichever came sooner) to implement new rates. That means that while many facilities have already changed their contracts, many have not.

Incarcerated people in facilities that have not yet amended their rates (or that have amended them, but reverse the changes in light of this move by the FCC) will continue to be charged the old rates until April 2027. In the meantime, we expect that sheriffs and the prison telecom industry will lobby aggressively for rollbacks to the 2024 order, meaning that the new rules, when finally implemented, may look very different than what the FCC originally passed.

Justice delayed

The 2024 FCC order was projected to save the loved ones of incarcerated people many millions of dollars every year — cutting the maximum allowed phone rates by approximately half, thus sparing households from debt and from impossible choices between communication and other basic necessities. In postponing its own rules, the agency is delaying economic justice for millions of working-class and low-income families.

This backtracking is also defying Congress. As FCC member Gomez noted, the Martha Wright-Reed Act was “a bipartisan law that ensures prison communications are priced fairly and no longer exploit incarcerated people and their families.” Rather than fulfilling the mandate of this law — the product of decades of advocacy by consumers, advocates, and law enforcement officials — the FCC’s latest move concedes to profit and political interests.

The Prison Policy Initiative strongly opposes this decision. Together with our allies, we will fight to ensure the historic 2024 order is not watered down to protect profits, but implemented as written to protect families.

Birth behind bars: Ten years of U.S. jail births covered in the news highlight horrific experiences and minimal data collection

For some of the thousands of pregnant people entering jails each year, at what might be their moment of greatest need — going into labor — jails turn a blind eye, harming mothers, newborns, and their families. The latest project from our partners at Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People, or ARRWIP, illuminates these haunting stories and the dire need for data and education about pregnancy in jails.

by Leah Wang and Bianca Schindeler, July 1, 2025

In the confines of an unsanitary jail cell, a woman delivers a baby alone: This is a typical news article about a jail birth. But when it comes to the 1.5 million women¹ cycling through jails each year, what more do experts know about jail births on a larger scale? The answer: Nothing — there is no regular data collection on pregnant or postpartum people held in local jails.² (As for those in prisons, there is some limited data collection.³)

Given the lack of transparency from jails about pregnancies, birth outcomes, and other facets of reproductive care, a team of student researchers is drawing attention to this data blind spot. The Birth in Jails Media Project, which draws entirely from local news coverage of jail births, provides a rich picture of how some pregnant people experience incarceration, labor, and childbirth, with more detail about jail conditions and staff responses than a national dataset can typically provide.⁴

In this briefing, we present the first-ever published findings from the Birth in Jails Media Project, one of many indispensable efforts from Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People (ARRWIP), a reproductive justice-oriented research group at John Hopkins University led by researcher and obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Carolyn Sufrin. (We’ve previously lifted up ARRWIP’s important work on contraception, abortion, breastfeeding, and medication for opioid use disorder policies for pregnant women in custody.)

Cases surfaced by the Birth in Jails Media Project suggest pregnant people going into labor behind bars experience great distress and maltreatment, often facing no choice but to give birth without medical assistance, support, or basic safety protocols. While the 35 mothers and newborns included in these cases are likely a small and unrepresentative share of all jail births between 2013 and 2023,⁵ their stories are powerful calls to action: Pregnant people in jails are in dire need of proper and timely care, and their experiences cannot continue to go undocumented. Lawsuits filed by mothers and advocates, our Media Project partners note, can be credited for moving the needle in some states, but too many stories remain in the shadows.

Because cases involving grave negligence or abuse are more likely to receive news coverage, the Media Project dataset may be skewed toward worse outcomes for pregnant people in jails. But the stories truthfully surface what has happened — and what will likely continue to happen — at some women’s moment of greatest need. Although jails operate independently of one another, the stories reveal systemic ignorance, lacking or nonexistent policies, and patterns of violence that call attention to misconceptions about how and why pregnant people become and remain incarcerated at all.

[The jail’s staff and medical contractors] “engaged in a cycle of punishing and isolating Ms. (unnamed here), while allowing her mental and physical health, and that of her unborn baby, to dangerously deteriorate.” – from a lawsuit filed in Virginia, after a 2021 jail birth resulting in neonatal death

Methodology and project details

Most births in jails happened inside jail cells, after repeated calls for medical assistance went ignored

Among the 35 jail births identified in the news between 2013 and 2023:

• At least two-thirds of births (25) occurred inside jail cells, which often contain nothing more than a mattress, a toilet, and a floor as options for delivery. For context, only about 22% of jails nationwide reported having medical treatment or hospital functions in 2019 (the most recent year these data were collected). At least three births happened inside “isolation” or solitary confinement cells; one woman, about to give birth, was put in solitary “to muffle her screams” because of her agonizing labor pains.
• In at least 24 cases, jail staff ignored repeated cries for help or medical assistance. In several instances, pregnant people called out for help or used their cell call buttons to no avail; in some cases, loved ones called the jail to ask that someone check on the mother. And in a few appalling instances, news coverage and lawsuits claim that staff laughed at or belittled the woman in labor, wrongfully assumed she was only experiencing withdrawal symptoms, told her to deal with the pain, or simply watched the delivery, providing no assistance whatsoever.⁸

Cut-rate careThe business of ‘healthcare’ behind bars

• One-fourth of babies (9 of 35) were stillborn or died within two weeks of being born. Five others suffered a documented injury or infection. It’s impossible to draw a straight line between these newborn babies’ health and the jails’ conditions, but in a few instances, delivery in a jail cell or into a toilet likely led to various infections of the eyes, blood, and placenta; in other newborns, inhaling water or fecal matter caused respiratory issues.
• In at least one-third of births, the baby was born preterm (before 37 weeks of pregnancy). Preterm birth is a leading cause of infant mortality and health conditions that can negatively impact an individual throughout their life. There are many risk factors for preterm birth, including maternal stress, anxiety, substance use, chronic health problems, and certain pregnancy histories. Jails should provide health care that addresses risk factors; the most vulnerable pregnant people, unfortunately, are often forced to rely on jails for the chance to access medical care.⁹
• More than half of jail births (19 of 35) led to a lawsuit, some of which were filed against private healthcare companies contracted to provide care inside jails. Many of the lawsuits remain unresolved; one lawsuit was dismissed, and eight ended in settlements reportedly ranging from $16,000 to $1.5 million.

“That pain [of labor] was indescribable. What hurt me more, though, was the fact that nobody cared.” – A mother who gave birth unassisted in a Colorado jail cell in 2018

Jail births led to only minimal changes in jail policy and practice

The Media Project research team found that when a jail’s administration formally responded to a mother’s complaint or lawsuit, they tended to deny wrongdoing, holding firm that correctional and medical staff followed protocol. Disturbingly, some jails admitted that their medical staff had no training on pregnancy or childbirth (thereby absolving them of misconduct). In a few cases, legal action and advocacy to address these horrifying incidents have led to some common-sense changes that should be on the books in every state.¹⁰

For example, after one woman gave birth in a Colorado jail cell in 2018 with no medical support, the jail instituted mandatory trainings and updated its policies to ensure that pregnant people in their custody at any stage of labor are immediately taken to the hospital, as part of a settlement agreement. Years later, Colorado lawmakers passed HB23-1187, which allows courts to offer bonds or alternative sentences to pregnant defendants.

A 2020 Florida law, the Tammy Jackson Act, also contains promising care provisions for pregnant people in custody, but has failed to prevent at least two in-jail births — one of which resulted in a newborn’s death — since the law went into effect. Florida advocacy groups have been working for years to advance another bill, “Ava’s Law,” which would allow judges to delay someone’s incarceration by up to 12 weeks to allow for birth or bonding with a child, mandate pregnancy tests for women who are not released after 72 hours, and require relevant data collection, among other provisions.¹¹

“I basically held my baby all night, until she died, until she turned blue” – a mother who gave birth three months early in a Florida jail, whose baby died hours later

The Birth in Jails Media Project highlights an urgent need for documentation and policies focused on jail pregnancy

For further readingAddressing family separation by incarceration

Now that there are some national-level data from state and federal prisons (collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics), it is time to ask jails to produce the same information. After all, the outsized growth of women’s incarceration compared to men’s incarceration in recent decades has disproportionately occurred in local jails. Indeed, the Bureau of Justice Statistics concluded in a recent “feasibility study” that it should be possible for jails to report this kind of data. Beyond counts of pregnant people entering jails (and prisons), these statistics should include:

• Specific live birth outcomes, such as the location of delivery, preterm, early term, and full term births, instances of low birth weight, and neonatal deaths;
• Other occurrences such as cesarean deliveries, miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths, ectopic pregnancies, and maternal deaths;¹²
• The actual provision of maternal healthcare services to people while in jail, such as pregnancy tests, prenatal vitamins, special diets, routine and high-risk prenatal care, and postpartum depression screening;
• Linkages to comprehensive demographic, health, and sentencing data.¹³

Data collection aside, some basic education on maternal health could support improving outcomes for pregnant women currently cycling through jails. In the instance where a pregnant person is incarcerated, correctional officers and frontline correctional health staff must be trained on how to recognize labor signs and other urgent maternal warning signs to facilitate appropriate and timely care. Along with training and education, jail staff must, importantly, believe, document, and respond to pregnant women’s reporting of their labor and other concerning pregnancy symptoms.

Ultimately, improved access to reproductive healthcare, expanded data, and fundamental training may help avoid distressing births behind jail walls, but our partners at ARRWIP insist that locking up pregnant people endangers maternal and newborn health and perpetuates structural inequities. Deeper reforms at the sentencing level, such as caregiver mitigation or diversion laws, combined with desperately-needed care standards and oversight,¹⁴ would be more effective in moving pregnant women and mothers out of jails to community-based supports and to their families.