A/HRC/7/12/Add.2 page 11 identified as non-citizens, long-time lawful permanent residents, non-citizen veterans, and vulnerable populations with a regular legal status have also been detained for months without sufficient due process protections, including fair individualized assessments of the reasons for their detention. 27. In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security arrested over 1.6 million migrants, including both undocumented migrants and legal permanent residents, of which over 230,000 were subsequently held in detention. 28. On average, there are over 25,000 migrants detained by immigration officials on any given day. The conditions and terms of their detention are often prison-like: freedom of movement is restricted and detainees wear prison uniforms and are kept in a punitive setting. Many detainees are held in jails instead of detention centres, since the United States uses a combination of facilities owned and operated by ICE, prison facilities owned and operated by private prison contractors and over 300 local and county jails from which ICE rents beds on a reimbursable basis. As a result, the majority of non-criminal immigrants are held in jails where they are mixed in with the prison’s criminal population. This is the case despite the fact that under United States law an immigration violation is a civil offence, not a crime. The mixture of criminal and immigrant detainees in these jails can result in the immigrants being treated in a manner that is inappropriate to their status as administrative, as opposed to criminal, pretrial or post-conviction inmates. 29. In 1996, the Immigration and Naturalization Service had a daily detention capacity of 8,279 beds. By 2006, that had increased to 27,500 with plans for future expansion. At an average cost of US$ 95 per person per day, immigration detention costs the United States Government US$ 1.2 billion per year. 30. ICE reported an average stay of 38 days for all migrant detainees in 2003. Asylum-seekers granted refugee status, spend an average of 10 months in detention, with the longest period in one case being three and a half years. There are instances of individuals with final orders of removal who languish in detention indefinitely, such as those from countries with whom the United States does not have diplomatic relations or that refuse to accept the return of their own nationals. Under United States law, migrant detainees about whom the United States has certain national security concerns are subject to the possibility of indefinite detention, in contravention of international standards. 31. Migrants in detention include asylum-seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, long-term permanent residents facing deportation for criminal convictions based on a long list of crimes (including minor ones), the sick, the elderly, pregnant women, transgender migrants detained according to their birth sex rather than their gender identity or expression, parents of children who are United States citizens, and families. Detention is emotionally and financially devastating, particularly when it divides families and leaves spouses and children to fend for themselves in the absence of the family’s main financial provider. 32. Immigrants are also often transferred to remote detention facilities, which interferes substantially with access to counsel and to family members and often causes great financial and emotional hardship for family members who are not detained. Thousands of those held in immigration detention are individuals who, by law, could be released.