Spain and Belgium, for instance, offer group homes where immigrants receive social work support and have their basic needs met while pursuing immigration status. A Salvadoran woman staying in Belgium told me she’d headed there because she knew from friends and family what awaited her in the States. Still, even through the Trump years, the United States employed other alternatives to detention that could be instituted easily and swiftly at scale. As of August, roughly 117,000 people were enrolled in Alternatives to Detention. They would probably still be alive today had they been released into an alternative program.

Source: International New York Times September 11, 2021 15:00 UTC