Invisible Prisons: How We Let This Happen

Immigration detention is supposed to be civil not punishment.

 But across the U.S., immigrants are being held in jail-like conditions under a patchwork of outdated and inconsistent standards, many without ever being charged with a crime.

In this episode, Joa pulls back the curtain on a system designed to look like bureaucracy but feel like incarceration. We explore how ICE contracts with private prisons and local jails, how per-bed payments create financial incentives to detain more people, and why detainees experience drastically different treatment depending on where they're held.

We also trace the language and policies that make it easy to ignore this injustice and who profits from our silence.

What You’ll Learn

• Why ICE detention isn’t supposed to be punitive—but often is
• What the PBNDS and NDS standards are, and why they matter
• How local governments and corporations profit from detaining immigrants
• The role of dehumanizing language in public apathy
• Why this system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as intended

Resources Mentioned

• ICE Detention Standards Overview (official)
• Appendix: ICE Detention Facilities & Assigned Standards
• DHS Office of Inspector General Report on Oversight Failures
• American Bar Association Detention Guide for Practitioners
• “Cultish” by Amanda Montell – on groupthink, misinformation, and language as power

Call to Action

• Share this episode with someone who thinks immigration detention is just “processing.”
• Ask your local representatives if your county jail has a contract with ICE (search: IGSA).
• Support organizations working to end immigration detention and expose profit motives, like Detention Watch Network, Freedom for Immigrants, and ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

Connect With Me

Instagram & Threads: @haveacupofjohanny

TikTok: @acupofjo_hanny

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Have a Cup of Johnny
• 0:32 Understanding Immigration Detention Acronyms
• 3:27 Detention That Feels Like Punishment
• 7:10 Following the Money in Detention
• 11:25 How Dehumanizing Language Enables the System
• 15:15 The System Is Working As Designed
• 17:20 Call to Action and Episode Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome back to have a Cup of Johnny. This season isn't about hustling harder. It's about coming home to yourself, to your voice, to your breath, to the quiet truth that you're still here and you're not starting over. You're starting again. This is your space to reflect, reset and remember who we tell you. So pour your cafecito and let's begin. In this episode, you will hear me talk about several acronyms, so I'm going to use this bit of recording right here to let you know what the various acronyms mean.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Ice is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's a federal agency under the Department of Homeland Security responsible for immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation. Pdnds Performance-Based National Detention Standards these are ICE's most comprehensive standards. They're supposed to ensure humane treatment and detention, covering medical care, mental health services, recreation, legal access and more. Note that not all facilities follow these and ICE doesn't enforce them consistently. Nds National Detention Standards these are older, more basic standards ICE created way back in 2000 and updated in 2019. They have fewer protections and are often used in jails and facilities that aren't set up for long-term or humane care. Think of NDS as the minimum and PBNDS as what should be happening.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Igsa Intergovernmental Service Agreement a contract between ICE and a local jail or government to hold immigrants in detention. Ice pays these jails per detainee per day, sometimes even if beds are empty. Digsa D-I-G-S-A Dedicated Intergovernmental Service Agreement, similar to an IGSA, as I noted before, but the facility only houses ICE detainees. These are often ran by private prison corporations. Cdf contract detention facility a privately owned and operated facility that ICE contracts with directly. These are for profit centers run by companies like CoreCivic or GEO Group. Spc Service Processing Center, a facility owned by the federal government and operated by ICE, often in partnership with private contractors. These are usually larger and handle longer-term cases. Usmsiga US Marshals Service Intergovernmental Agreement. Ice sometimes rent bed spaces in jails that are already contracted with the US Marshals Service.

Speaker 1: 3:12

These places don't follow ICE standards at all. They follow Marshall's rules, which are often more punitive, and this is where we get confused sometimes whether it's a detention or it's an imprisonment. Frs Family Residential Standards Standards designed specifically for detention centers that hold parents with children. These are different from the ones used for adults detained alone. They're not supposed to be in prison. They haven't been convicted of a crime. Be in prison. They haven't been convicted of a crime. They're waiting on hearings on papers, on decisions that will shape the rest of their lives. But immigration detention, it doesn't feel like waiting, it feels like punishment, isolation, cold uniforms, early wake-ups, controlled movement, cold uniforms, early wake-ups, controlled movement, solitary confinement. And while we argue about who deserves to be here, someone is making money off the debate.

Speaker 1: 4:21

This is have a Cup of Johnny, and today's episode we're going to change it up. It's called Invisible Prisons. How we Let this Happen, because this system didn't break. It was built like this.

Speaker 1: 4:39

I started thinking this morning before coming over here. I kept seeing things about alligator alcatraz quite a lot popping up on my feed and I was like and then I also saw a lot of commentary about it, and, as I do, I'd rather just check and do research and once again go down the rabbit hole because I want to know what is real, what is not and what I found. I was like well, let me share it with my vasitos, let me share it with the listeners, right? So that's how this episode came to be. It's still debunking immigration, it's still under the same focus as June and July has been, but we're going to specifically talk about this system of detention, almost like incarceration.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And here's the part that always shocks people, because you heard me saying detention right, but it feels like incarceration. And I've said this before in my TikTok videos and I've said it here on the podcast as well immigration detention is a civil, not a criminal matter. That means that people held by ICE aren't serving a sentence. They haven't been convicted of a crime. Technically, they're not in jail because they did something wrong. They're there because the government says they need to wait in custody. But when you look inside an ICE detention facility, what you'll find is uniforms, lockdowns, solitary strip searches and overcrowded cells. You'll find people eating dinner at 4 pm and going to bed when a buzzer tells them. You'll find women in orange jumpsuits who were picked up after calling the police for help. You'll find kids crying behind a plexiglass. So what happened?

Speaker 1: 6:40

Ice doesn't build its own facilities. Instead, it contracts with local jails and private prisons and pays them per day, per person. It's detention, but it feels like incarceration in private prisons. It's no wonder why detention feels and looks like incarceration. So when they rent punishment infrastructure, how can they expect it to feel humane? It doesn't. If you were wondering Now, if you ask ICE about this, they'll tell you we have standards, and they do.

Speaker 1: 7:31

They have five different ones. Actually, that's not a flex. By the way. If you know anything about standards, you don't want to have too many of them, right? You want to have one standard, because when you have more than one, then that's a lot of loopholes that people can go through. So, instead of choosing one set of protections for all detainees, ice lets every facility follow a different set based on what's convenient for them. Some use PBNDS 2011, which is the most protective. Others still follow the NDS 2000, which is a jail standard from 25 years ago. Many also use the NDS 2019, which actually rolled back previous protections.

Speaker 1: 8:20

So if you land in a modern center, you might get decent health care and access to legal counsel. If you land in a rural jail, you might get 15 minutes of phone time a week and no mental health support. Same system, same agency, wildly different treatment. But why, you may ask. Well, because it's cheaper. That's one of them. Because no one's watching, that's another one. And because when you're invisible, your rights are negotiable. That is something that you heard me talk about dehumanizing language, but let's dig into. Because is cheaper. Let's follow the money for a second here.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Ice pays local jails and private contractors on a per bed per day basis. I'm going to say that again Per bed per day basis. That means every person detained is a paycheck to that local jail or private contractor Every night they stay. That's another check. If beds are empty, some counties still get paid anyways because they negotiate a guaranteed minimums in their contracts. Yep, you heard that right. They get paid for people who aren't even there. So you've seen this.

Speaker 1: 9:54

Now this is creating a system, an economy that is motivated by A having detention facilities there in their local government because they may get paid minimums whether the beds are filled or not, and it is motivated by how many humans are there and for how long as well, because they also get paid for that. So now you have a system that rewards full facilities, punishes, release and turns detainees into a profit centers. And if you're wondering how it got like this, just look at the companies who benefit from them. At the companies who benefit from them CoreCivic, geogroup. They've spent millions lobbying Congress to keep detention growing and they've often built in small towns where the only jobs are corrections jobs and where they can hide these detention facilities away and it becomes an economy. And once people depend on it for income, they stop asking questions about what's happening inside.

Speaker 1: 11:19

And there it is, that silence. Now you might be wondering why haven't we heard more about this? Why now? Why hasn't been more outrage, especially before and let's be honest, you heard me talk about this Dehumanizing language has done its job, but dehumanizing language didn't start this year or last year. It has been ongoing.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Dehumanizing language it's a nonpartisan thing. It has always been here. When you call someone illegal, when you say they broke the law, even though it's a civil matter, when you describe children as anchors hint, hint, last episode you create emotional distance between yourself and that human being. So it's not that we're just finding out about this now. It's not that we were in outrage before, but we are now. It's that dehumanizing language has slowly but surely taken over society and stripped them of empathy, slowly but surely. And it doesn't help when you have government officials, when you have leadership that rewards that. So it's a combination of the humanizing language doing its thing throughout all these years, all this time, and also having leadership encourage it. So, pertaining to this situation, the result of that dehumanizing language, its effect and the encouragement of the dehumanizing language is that you strip away the truth of who's really in these cages Because now you see them as illegal, you see them as criminals, you see them as people that break the law, you see them as anchors, when in reality, the people that are in those cages are a woman who fled domestic violence, a teenager who aged out of DACA, a father who missed a hearing because he couldn't find a ride, a mother separated from her baby at the border, people who belong somewhere, just not here, according to someone. But dehumanizing language gives us permission not to care, not to carry that burden of grief in our conscious.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Here's what gets me the most. This entire system is framed as a public safety measure. But I said this stats before in this show and I'll say it again 70% of people in ICE custody have no criminal record at all. I mean no criminal record. And then of those who do, of that, 30%, most are civil infractions, not criminal civil infractions. We're talking about expired visas, mischecked ins, not violent crimes. Expired visas, mischecked ins, but not violent crimes. So if this isn't about safety, if this isn't about justice, then what is it about? Well, you heard me talk about who gets paid. It's about money, it's about control and it's about keeping people afraid to belong.

Speaker 1: 15:09

And here's what I want you to take away from this episode is that this system didn't fail. It is functioning exactly how it was designed. It was designed to use jail infrastructure to hold people without calling it a prison. That's a loophole. Let different facilities follow different standards so no one knows what to expect. That's another loophole. Incentivize detention with per bed payments and guaranteed minimums Ooh, that's a motivation. Call it civil but make it criminal and profit off of the confusion. But make it criminal and profit off of the confusion and rely on language that makes the public stop seeing people as people. That's the system, so it's not broken. It is working exactly as it was intended until we break it open.

Speaker 1: 16:14

All right, if this episode moved, you do one thing today Share with someone who still thinks immigration detention is just holding. Ask your local officials if your county has an IGSA contract with ICE. Support local abolition and decarceration efforts, or just ask the question who gets to be safe and who profits when others don't? In the show notes, I'll link to a map of ICE detention facilities and their assigned standards so that way you know. There is a list out there that says the name of the detention facilities, the state or location of where they are, as well as what standard they follow, a breakdown of how the per bed contracts work organizations that are actively fighting detention, profiteering. And next week we will dig into another myth of just get in line and why that line doesn't exist for most immigrants.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Until then, keep your heart open, please. They're trying so hard to have you close your heart. Keep your research sharp and your empathy loud. Now is the time to research everything that you see pass through your feet. Now is the time. Now is the time to look at things outside of your circle, so that way you can get a gauge on the truth, so that way you know exactly what is going on, because right now there's a lot of false things and false facts being pushed as truth out there, and it's very important for us to get caught up on what is really true. And thank you once again for having a cup with me and I hope that you come back next Wednesday for another episode. Bye, if today's episode spoke to you, share with somebody who's finding their way back too to you, share with somebody who's finding their way back too. And if you haven't yet, visit haveacupofjoanniecom for more stories, blog posts and the bits that started it all. Thank you for being here. Until next time, be soft, be bold and always have a cup of joannie.