May 22, 2008
Enforcement on Steroids: Homeland Security’s Emerging Immigration Police State
…The United States holds around 350 detainees in its "legal black hole" in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and people around the world are rightly appalled by the lack of due process afforded them. Three times that many people, picked up within the United States, have been ordered deported but can't be returned to their country and are now facing the prospect of "indefinite detention" — they could potentially die in prison if the Bush administration and its allies have their way. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the government didn't have the authority to detain immigrants forever, but Homeland Security has resisted the order.
In addition to its own detention facilities — they're not called "jails" because those being held include many who aren't charged with a crime — ICE leases thousands of beds in 312 county and city prisons, where a majority of immigrant detainees are held.
These include dozens of private, for-profit prison facilities. The immigration detention system has proven a cash cow for companies like Halliburton, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. "Housing federal detainees typically brings in more per 'man-day,' an industry term for what is earned per detainee," than they can get from state prison systems," wrote Leslie Berestein in the San Diego Union-Tribune…
LINK - Alternet.org
