Sponsors (134)
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Pramila Jayapal · Last progress December 3, 2025
The bill substantially raises protections, transparency, and due-process for immigrants in DHS custody—improving safety, legal access, and oversight—but does so at meaningful fiscal and operational cost and with trade-offs for enforcement flexibility and short-term facility security.
Immigrants in DHS custody and their families will see stronger, enforceable detention standards, regular unannounced inspections, public reporting (including death investigations), and increased legislative oversight that raise transparency and accountability across facilities.
Detained noncitizens will get better access to counsel and due process through timely legal orientations, guaranteed private attorney communications, expedited custody hearings and written decisions, bond amounts tied to ability to pay, and the ability to sue for violations.
People incarcerated by the Department will be prohibited from placement in solitary confinement (with a narrow sleep-period exception), reducing isolation-related physical and mental harms and supporting rehabilitation.
Taxpayers and DHS budgets will face substantial new costs because implementing nationwide standards, inspections, public reporting, private communication systems, NGO orientation programs, facility conversions, and ending some for-profit contracts will require funding and staffing.
Law enforcement, detention staff, and facility operations will face increased security and logistical burdens—managing dangerous or disruptive inmates without solitary options, handling unannounced congressional visits, confidential attorney access, and more detainee transports may raise short-term safety and staffing strains.
Federal courts and facilities will face more litigation and potential payouts because detainees can sue for standards violations, which could increase caseloads, raise liability costs, and prompt some providers to adopt more restrictive practices to limit risk.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits solitary, sets ABA-level detention standards and annual OIG inspections, phases out for-profit detention, guarantees legal orientation and counsel access, and reforms arrest, bond, and custody rules to favor release and oversight.
Ends use of solitary confinement in DHS immigrant detention, requires legal orientation and confidential access to counsel, and creates binding detention standards with annual unannounced OIG inspections and public reporting. The bill phases out for-profit detention and requires DHS-owned or nonprofit-run facilities, expands congressional oversight access, mandates timely custody hearings and regular reviews, and changes arrest, bond, and removal custody rules to increase release opportunities and protections for children and vulnerable people. These changes impose deadlines for regulations and implementation (including standards within 1 year and a 3-year phaseout of for-profit contracts), create a private right of action for detainees, require DHS investigations and public reports for in-custody deaths, and direct DHS to provide court transport for detained people required to appear in non-immigration courts.