Across the United States, local governments are being paid to detain immigrants in jails and detention facilities — in some cases holding people for months or longer, even when they have not been charged with a crime.

In Pennsylvania alone, counties earned over $21 million in recent years from these agreements.

What started as isolated agreements has grown into a system where public institutions can become financially dependent on detention. When incarceration becomes a source of revenue, it creates incentives that risk putting profit ahead of fairness, accountability, and basic human dignity.

This is not about politics — it’s about principle. No community should rely on detaining people in civil immigration cases to balance its budget.

We are calling on Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, and state and local leaders nationwide to end financial incentives tied to immigrant detention and to phase out contracts that allow public entities to profit from holding people in civil cases.

Our communities should be built on trust and transparency — not systems that depend on detention for funding.

Photo by Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images