Human Rights Watch (HRW) headquartered in New York City, reported recently that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) has been increasing their practice of transferring immigrants facing deportation to remote detention centers thus hampering their ability to defend themselves against deportation.

Human Rights Watch published an 88 page report titled, “Locked Up Far Away: The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States .”

The report presented data analyzed for Human Rights Watch by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse  (TRAC) of Syracuse University.

The data showed that 53 percent of the 1.4 million transfers have taken place since 2006, and most occur between state and local jails that contract with the USICE to provide detention bed space. The report’s findings are based on the interviews with officials, immigration lawyers, detainees, and their family members.