“It is heartbreaking to hear there could be a return to the Trump-era use of” family detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, migrant child advocate lawyer Leecia Welch told the New York Times, in an article published last night revealing that the Biden administration is considering reviving migrant family detention. The administration ceased the controversial practice in 2021.

It’s not just heartbreaking. It’s also nonsensical as a deterrent, and remarkably expensive.

As a deterrent: in January CBP encountered 38,308 members of migrant families, most of whom sought to turn themselves in and seek asylum. The monthly average during the Biden administration is 52,652 family members encountered each month.

Chart: "CBP Encounters with Family Unit Members at the U.S.-Mexico Border," showing how small 2,500 is compared to the total number of family apprehensions.

	Mar-20	Apr-20	May-20	Jun-20	Jul-20	Aug-20	Sep-20	Oct-20	Nov-20	Dec-20	Jan-21	Feb-21	Mar-21	Apr-21	May-21	Jun-21	Jul-21	Aug-21	Sep-21	Oct-21	Nov-21	Dec-21	Jan-22	Feb-22	Mar-22	Apr-22	May-22	Jun-22	Jul-22	Aug-22	Sep-22	Oct-22	Nov-22	Dec-22	Jan-23
Encounters	4675	756	1082	1735	2118	2816	3981	4859	4391	4493	7401	19735	54291	50228	44902	56065	83804	87054	64613	42985	45364	52052	32242	26951	38173	55419	59791	51974	52324	52068	54266	60056	63544	77445	38308

Compare that to the 2,500 family detention bed spaces that the Trump administration maintained, for up to 20 days at a time per family. That’s perhaps 4,000 spaces per month. 4,000 out of 50,000 is an 8 percent chance of ending up in family detention for a few weeks while asylum officers consider the credibility of a family’s asylum claim. Those odds don’t make for much of a deterrent, if that’s the purpose of administration officials favoring a family detention revival.

Remarkably expensive: Here’s a screenshot from the Trump administration’s 2020 congressional budget request for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The administration was congratulating itself for lowering the daily cost of detaining a migrant family from $319.37 to $295.94 per night in payments to private contractors. (One can only imagine what sort of cutbacks in humane treatment that would have meant.)

Text and table from page 144 of the 2020 ICE Congressional Budget Justification. Last row of the table is circled:

Family Beds:
FFP contracts are used for detention beds, guard services, and healthcare at ICE’s three FRCs located in South Texas, Karnes County, and Berks
County. Since these contracts are fixed price, costs do not vary with the number of family detainees. ICE projects total costs of $270.1M in FY 2020
for family beds. The table below shows the break-out of these costs. Dividing the total funding requirement of $270.1M by the projected family ADP
of 2,500 results in an effective family bed rate of $295.94. As with adult beds, beginning in FY 2019, ICE no longer includes indirect expenses in the
derivation of its average daily bed rate for family beds following the SWC realignment.
Projected FFP Contract Costs
(Dollars in Thousands)
FY 2018
Enacted
FY 2019
Projected
FY 2020
Projected
South Texas FRC with Healthcare $207,836 $211,161 $185,829
Karnes County FRC with Healthcare $61,002 $61,978 $64,578
Berks County FRC with Healthcare $11,296 $12,117 $12,780
Other Direct Costs $5,548 $5,637 $6,865
Total Direct Costs $286,312 $290,893 $270,052
Indirect Costs $5,112 N/A N/A
Total Costs $291,425 N/A N/A
Effective Family Bed Rate $319.37 $318.79 $295.94

Even if the Biden administration were to stick to that austerely low per-night rate, adjusting for inflation now raises it to $344.04 per family per night.

$344 per night to adopt a cruel policy that hardly constitutes a deterrent anyway? What exactly is the goal here?

Even the politics don’t make sense: family detention, if implemented, would horrify and demotivate an important portion of Democratic-leaning voters ahead of the 2024 elections. I urge Biden administration officials to drop this.