As we all know and as the HuffPost has reported, more than 60 percent of prison inmates in the U.S. identify as African American or Latino despite making up only 30 percent of the population. Why? Because private prisons seek the least expensive prisoner to generate the highest possible profit. If you are a prisoner today, and you are over 50 years old, there is a greater likelihood that you are white. If you are under 50 years old — particularly if you’re closer to 30 years old — you’re more likely to be a person of color.” He references a 2012 ACLU report which found that it costs $68,270 to support a prisoner age 50 or older compared with $34,135 per year to house a non-geriatric prisoner. Now that that’s out the way, I want my black and brown brother to move over, there is another prisoner that generates more profit than you do. Immigrants.
According to Grassroot Leadership, in 2009, in the midst of a multi-year decline in the undocumented immigrant population, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), then Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, inserted the following language regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention budget into the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2010: “…funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 33,400 detention beds.” This directive established what would become a controversial policy interpreted by ICE as a mandate to contract for and fill 33,400 (increased in 2013 to 34,000) detention beds on a daily basis. The directive would come to be known as the “immigrant detention quota” or “bed mandate.” The immigration detention quota is unprecedented; no other law enforcement agency operates under a detention quota mandated by Congress. Think about it. Most of them are under 50 years of age, they don’t have any right to speak of and Immigration and Enforcement Control is mandated by Congress to keep 34,000 beds filled. Two private prison corporations — CCA and GEO Group — dominate the immigration detention industry. Together, they operate eight of the ten largest immigrant detention centers. GEO and CCA combined operate 72 percent of the privately contracted ICE immigrant detention beds. Both CCA and GEO have both expanded their capacity for detaining women and children in new family detention centers. Contrary to private prison corporation claims that they do not lobby on issues related to immigration policy, between 2008 and 2014, CCA spent $10,560,000 in quarters where they lobbied on issues related to immigrant detention and immigration reform. Of that amount, CCA spent $9,760,000, — 61 percent of total private prison lobbying expenditures — in quarters where they directly lobbied the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee,which maintains the immigrant detention quota language and shapes the way in which it is interpreted. So there is a method to their madness. Now if thats not despicable enough, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials plan to transfer some 1,600 immigrant detainees to federal prisons across the United States, with the largest group heading to a prison in Victorville in California. Over one thousand immigrants will be house in the federal penitentiary. Meanwhile their children will be held in cages in who knows where, while DHS sorts out their status. Under previous administrations, first-time border crossers were usually put through civil deportation proceedings. Detainees awaiting civil hearings are usually housed in ICE detention facilities or county jails. The 1,600 detainees transferred to prisons are expected to be there for 120 days while ICE finds space in new detention facilities and we kinda know where that is, at private prison CCA or GEO. This is a hot mess. People are still reeling from the Conahan and Ciavarella fiasco. You probably heard about it, the two Pennsylvania judges who were giving kids harsher sentences and sending them to private prisons for kickbacks. Both of them are spending time with “Big Willie.” Conahan got 17 and a half, while Ciavarella has to protect his backside for 28 years. Immigrant advocates are furious saying, federal penitentiaries are a place for criminals, not people awaiting their turn in immigration court and that this is another escalation of the Trump administration’s xenophobic policies on asylum seekers and immigrants. In a new and surprising turn, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said recently, it will study whether to discontinue using privately-run detention centers for migrants, just a few weeks after the Justice Department announced it will phase out private federal prisons after an internal investigation declared them unsafe. Like the old saying goes, “study long, study wrong.”
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