Sponsors (134)
Official title: To provide standards for facilities at which aliens in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security are detained, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Pramila Jayapal · Last progress December 3, 2025
The bill substantially expands detainee protections, transparency, and access to counsel while reducing wealth- and solitary-based detention, but it imposes significant implementation, operational, and fiscal burdens that could strain DHS, courts, and local capacity and raise short-term safety and supervision trade-offs.
Immigrants and detainees will get substantially better access to counsel and legal process — including intake orientations, confidential attorney communications, faster custody/bond determinations and hearings, and a prompt detainee locator — improving ability to participate in proceedings and reducing wrongful removals.
People in DHS custody will benefit from stronger baseline detention standards, more frequent unannounced inspections, required death investigations, and the ability to seek federal court remedies (including injunctive relief), which together raise oversight and can improve health, safety, and conditions.
Children and families: the bill affirms avoiding child detention and requires unaccompanied minors be transferred to HHS/ORR custody, reducing developmental and psychological harm to children.
Taxpayers and DHS budgets will face substantial new costs — from implementing nationwide standards, inspections, legal-orientation programs, facility upgrades, lawsuits and damage awards, transporting detainees, and transitioning away from for-profit contracts.
Federal and facility operations may be strained: eliminating or restricting solitary, meeting inspection/oversight demands, escorting detainees to outside courts, and rapid transition deadlines could create staffing shortages, scheduling pressures, and management challenges for DHS and detention staff.
Public-safety and national-security concerns: tighter limits on warrantless arrests, repeal of some mandatory detention rules, and reduced use of certain containment tools (like solitary or electronic monitoring) could lead to more releases or fewer detention options, which critics say may increase risk if supervision is insufficient.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Overhauls DHS immigration detention: bans solitary, expands legal access and oversight, phases out for‑profit facilities, shortens detention timelines, and creates private enforcement rights.
Rewrites federal immigration detention rules to limit and reform how DHS holds noncitizens. It bans the use of solitary confinement, requires timely legal orientation and confidential access to counsel, mandates frequent custody reviews and presumption of release in many cases, phases out for‑profit detention within three years, and imposes new inspection, reporting, and private‑right‑of‑action remedies for violations. The bill also requires DHS to adopt binding detention standards based on the American Bar Association model, allows Members of Congress oversight access to facilities, shortens some detention periods and timelines for hearings, and creates new transportation and visitation requirements. Several statutory changes alter arrest and detention authority, bond procedures, removal‑period rules, and protections for children and other vulnerable people.