Immigration
September 9, 2011
Private prisons profitting from 9/11
On a conference call with investors less than two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wall Street executive Steve Logan predicted a new era of unbridled growth for his industry: the for-profit prison business.
"It is clear that since Sept. 11, there's a heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and in the U.S.," Logan, the chief executive of publicly-traded prison corporation Cornell Companies, told analysts on a quarterly earnings call. "More people are gonna get caught. ... So I would say that's positive."
Logan's upbeat assessment of the post-9/11 world would prove true, as the federal government has embarked on an unprecedented campaign to round up, detain and eventually deport illegal immigrants under the guise of bolstering national security. Since Congress brought immigration enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the number of immigrants locked up each year has nearly doubled to more than 390,000, creating a lucrative opportunity for private corporations hired to build and supervise detention centers across the country...
LINK - HuffingtonPost.com
June 27, 2011
Private prison guard arrested for sexual abuse of immigrant detainee
A guard at an immigrant detention center in South Texas is scheduled to appear before a federal judge after spending the weekend in jail on a charge that he sexually abused a detainee in 2008.
The Justice Department accuses 31-year-old Edwin Rodriguez of Raymondville of having sex with a woman who was awaiting deportation at the Willacy Detention Center in October 2008. The court hearing is set for Monday afternoon.
Rodriguez was an employee of Management & Training Corporation, or MTC, a contractor that operates the facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
LINK - VictoriaAdvocate.com
June 20, 2011
Immigration Detention: The Golden Goose for Private Prisons
For many months now, states all over the U.S. and the federal government have taken steps to "get tough" on undocumented immigrants of color without taking into account the fact that workers are crossing the border because U.S. employers are desperate for their labor and no visas exist to permit their entry.
Instead of spending their time tackling this reality, which if actually addressed might create a basis for the nondiscriminatory enforcement of immigration laws, legislators are instead continuing to introduce bills, such as Rep. Lamar Smith's H.R. 1932.
These bills throw more money at detention centers and enforcement operations and ups the ante by making their imprisonment mandatory and indefinite, regardless of Supreme Court precedent finding that it's unconstitutional...
LINK - HuffingtonPost.com
June 1, 2011
GEO Group, Inc. lands federal contract for 1,300 inmates in Adelanto private prison
A private management company will house up to 1,300 immigration detainees in Southern California after an agreement between the company, the city of Adelanto and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced Wednesday.
The city approached ICE to express interest in housing a detention facility and in turn negotiated with Florida-based GEO Group Inc. to house the facility, said ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice.The company purchased the 650-bed facility from Adelanto last year for about $28 million and invested $22 million to renovate and retrofit it, according to company officials. A 650-bed expansion on adjacent land is expected to be complete by the end of 2012...
LINK - LATimes.com
February 17, 2011
Private Prisons - CCA treatment of detainees exposed
Aisha comes from a rural area near Mogadishu in Somalia. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said of the fighting and war-torn conditions that led her to flee her homeland.
She is too traumatized to share details of her treatment in Somalia, a place where women are often raped and brutalized by soldiers, and where young boys are forced at gunpoint into military service. “I had a smuggler take me out of Somalia,” she said, then described her long and difficult journey to freedom.
Instead of freedom, however, she was taken into custody and confined inside a detention facility in Otay Mesa run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private prison company that operates the maximum security facility for U.S. Homeland Security...
LINK - EastCountyMagazine.org
June 30, 2010
How The Recession Hurts Private Prisons
Baldwin, Mich., (population 1,107), will soon have more prison beds than full-time residents. On the outskirts of town, one of the country’s largest private prison companies recently spent $60 million to expand a former juvenile prison into a 1,755-bed facility meant to house illegal immigrants before deportation. This is the same town where every summer locals gather for a carnival nicknamed Troutarama at which teenage girls vie for the crown of Ms. Lake County. Thirty-two percent of Baldwin’s families live below the poverty line, in a state with a 13.6 percent unemployment rate, compared to the national unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. Baldwin residents were counting on the private prison to create jobs, but this past March, the federal government pulled back its funding on the bid. This left the Geo Group, Inc., with an empty fortress in the middle of rural Michigan, 85 miles north of Grand Rapids.
A similar scenario is playing out across the country, in states such as California, Oklahoma, and Colorado, where entire private prisons now sit vacant...
LINK - Newsweek.com
June 1, 2010
ICE investigating sexual assaults at CCA-operated private prison
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating allegations that a guard at a central Texas detention facility sexually assaulted female detainees on their way to being deported.
Agency spokesman Brian Hale said Friday the guard has been fired and Corrections Corporation of America, which manages the prison, is on probation pending the investigation's outcome.
Several women who were held at T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas, were groped while being patted down and at least one was propositioned for sex, ICE said...
LINK - KansasCity.com
February 28, 2010
Protesters gather in front of CCA immigration prisons
Around 50 people, mostly from area Catholic Churches, assembled in front of the North Georgia Detention Center On Main Street at noon Thursday to call for fair treatment and human rights for inmates they say don’t belong inside the walls.
The chill of February did not discourage them from gathering with signs advocating dignity and fairness according to P.J. Edwards, with Georgia Detention Watch, who wishes the immigration detention facilities would go away.
“The vast majority of these detainees aren’t criminals, they aren’t a threat to society, and this level of detention isn't really unnecessary,” Edwards said. “There are alternatives like parole and community based ‘checking in’ that are shown to be effective and much less expensive...”
LINK - AccessNorthGA.com
February 5, 2010
NOT eliminated, but SCAAP funding for prisons reduced by $70 million
The $90 million California is expected to receive from the federal government this year for jailing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes is far short of the state's roughly $1 billion annual cost, officials said.
"The federal government has sole control over the nation's borders. The states do not," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state's finance department. "The incarceration costs associated are borne disproportionally by states like California."
Los Angeles County officials have not projected how much in reimbursement funds they could receive this year.
But in 2009, the county received $15.4 million in federal money, officials said. That is a fraction of the $100 million it spends on average to jail illegal immigrants…
LINK - LATimes.com
February 1, 2010
Editorial: Gov’s Mexican prison idea a joke?
Governor, tell us you're joking about building state prisons in Mexico.
More absurd ideas may have arisen out of the Capitol in recent history, but none quite so impossibly impractical has made it out the mouth of a governor not nicknamed Moonbeam.
First, the context. This wasn't something Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger muttered in the gym locker room, though for all we know that's where the idea originated. (The governor's office remains coy about exactly who came up with this notion of sending thousands of undocumented inmates to specially built prisons south of the border.)
This was a straight-faced statement at the Sacramento Press Club, where the governor knew he was on the record…
LINK - FresnoBee.com
January 26, 2010
Schwarzenegger, Mexico and private prisons?
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state could save $1 billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico to house undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in California.
The governor floated the idea during an appearance at the Sacramento Press Club in response to a question about controlling state spending. His speech came on the same day that changes in prisoner parole and credits for time served took effect.
"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. … And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education…
LINK - SFGate.com
January 26, 2010
Governor looks south of the border for prisons
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state could save $1 billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico to house undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in California.
The governor floated the idea during an appearance at the Sacramento Press Club in response to a question about controlling state spending. His speech came on the same day that changes in prisoner parole and credits for time served took effect.
"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison. … And all this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting it would save the state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education…
LINK - SFGate.com (The San Francisco Gate)
January 25, 2010
Gov wants to build private prisons in Mexico for CA’s criminal aliens
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated an unusual suggestion Monday on how to cut the state's bloated prison costs with a private venture — build a private prison in Mexico.
"We pay them to build the prison down in Mexico, and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in prison," Schwarzenegger told a gathering of the Sacramento Press Club. "And with the prison guards and all this, it would be half the cost."
The governor's remark came amid alarm from law enforcement and crime victim groups about a new program meant to thin the state's prison population through early release…
LINK - KCRA.com
January 25, 2010
Schwarzenegger: Send illegal immigrant inmates to Mexico
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday offered yet another way California can save on incarcerating illegal immigrants: send them to Mexico.
The Republican governor said he will not raise taxes for a second year in a row during a speech at the Sacramento Press Club. Instead, he suggested that the state can find plenty of money in other ways such as cutting pension costs, allowing offshore oil drilling and lowering prison expenditures.
Schwarzenegger's budget plan calls for an $880 million infusion from the federal government to pay for housing illegal immigrant prisoners who have committed crimes in California. The governor also wants to rely more on private prison companies to run the state's corrections facilities…
LINK - SacBee.com
January 16, 2010
$40 million tab for undocumented prisoners in Monterey County
It costs California taxpayers $40 million annually to house inmates in Monterey County prisons who are in the country illegally or whose immigration status is in question.
Getting more federal money to pay the cost of incarcerating such prisoners has been on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's agenda since he raised the issue with the Bush administration several years ago. Now he's turned up the volume a notch, asking this month for $880 million in federal money for undocumented inmates, part of his effort to bridge a $20 billion California budget deficit.
At the Salinas Valley State Prison and the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, 757 inmates are subject to existing or potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds, according to data from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation…
LINK - TheCalifornian.com
January 13, 2010
CCA confirms plans to house CA state inmates at California City private prison
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not renewed its contract with Corrections Corp. of America to manage more than 2,000 inmates now housed in California under the Criminal Alien Requirement program.
The contract, which has been awarded to Cornell Cos., will take about $22 million annually – about 12 cents per diluted share – off CCA's bottom line, estimated Avondale Partners analyst Kevin Campbell. Nashville-based CCA – which did get a renewed BOP deal to manage 1,200 inmates in New Mexico – had been expected to earn $1.40 per share in 2010.
In a statement, CCA President and CEO Damon Hininger said the company believes the BOP's move is based primarily on "escalating federal wage determination costs in California, and does not reflect the quality of operations our company and staff have provided to the BOP…"
LINK - NashvillePost.com
January 11, 2010
Schwarzenegger wants feds to take over all illegal immigrants in CA prisons
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested one more "trigger" alternative Monday if the federal government does not provide California with additional federal funds — transferring undocumented immigrant prisoners to the federal government.
The Republican governor last week relied on getting $880 million in federal funds for undocumented inmates to help bridge the state's $19.9 billion deficit through June 2011. President Barack Obama proposed eliminating that funding altogether last year, and Congress plans to allocate not even half that amount for all 50 states.
"Why should we pay for it when it is the federal government that is having the lax policies on the borders, and is really in charge of immigration policies?" Schwarzenegger said Monday in Torrance during a press conference to promote his job creation plan…
LINK - SacBee.com
December 11, 2009
Congress cuts money to states for criminal aliens
California and other financially strapped states will lose tens of millions of federal dollars that they spend to jail illegal immigrants charged with crimes, under Congress' latest spending bill.
The $1.1 trillion plan, finalized by House and Senate negotiators Tuesday night, combines six of the large yearly appropriations bills passed by Congress to keep the government running.
State officials and members of the California congressional delegation had lobbied hard once again to increase aid to the states for the program, hoping to cash in on California's increased clout in Washington this year…
LINK - SacBee.com
October 6, 2009
Napolitano announces reforms at immigrant detention centers
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday a package of reforms aimed at making detention centers for immigrants in Arizona and throughout the nation safer, more humane and less costly.
The reforms include separating immigrants with criminal records from those who are merely seeking asylum and finding alternatives to detention for those who pose no real danger to the public.
Alternatives could include putting ankle bracelets on immigrants to keep track of their whereabouts, Napolitano said. She estimated that alternatives would cost $14 per day at most compared with more than the $100 per day it costs to detain someone. Detaining immigrants cost nearly $2 billion in 2008…
LINK - AZCentral.com
October 1, 2009
Prison privateer CCA abuse/neglect case from San Diego heads to U.S. Supreme Court
A lawsuit filed by a now-deceased man over inappropriate medical care while he was in the custody of U.S. immigration officials in San Diego is set to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Francisco Castañeda, an immigrant from El Salvador, died in February 2008 after a battle with penile cancer. Castañeda had sought medical care for symptoms while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a contract detention facility in San Diego, and later at an agency facility in the Los Angeles area.
Castañeda, who had been in the United States since age 10, had landed in detention after a short drug-related sentence in state prison triggered deportation proceedings…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)
September 21, 2009
Private company plans illegal-immigrant prison in Adelanto
A private prison operator has plans to build a 2,200-bed detention center that holds illegal immigrants on 51 acres near two other local prisons.
City Council will decide on Wednesday whether to approve the GEO Group Inc.'s development plan and conditional use permit to construct a new correctional facility on the northeast corner of Raccoon Avenue and Rancho Road.
But the proposed facility also hinges on GEO Group winning a federal contract from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart…
LINK - VVDailyPress.com
August 24, 2009
New private prison company wants to build in W. Virginia
Editor's note: This is the first of two stories on the illegal immigrant detention center proposed for Pendleton County, W.Va. Tuesday's story will look at those opposed to the facility and why they're against it.
BRANDYWINE, W.Va. - The owner of a company proposing to build a privately funded illegal alien detention center here said he will not go forward with the plan if a majority of local residents oppose the controversial project.
"We won't come unless we're wanted," George Barlow, head of GSI Professional Corrections, said by telephone Wednesday.
Barlow also won't build the center if he can't receive a long term contract from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
LINK - RockTownWeekly.com
August 6, 2009
U.S. to announce plan to overhaul immigration detention system
…Details are sketchy, and even the first steps will take months or years to complete. They include reviewing the federal government's contracts with more than 350 local jails and private prisons, with an eye toward consolidating many detainees in places more suitable for noncriminals facing deportation — some possibly in centers built and run by the government.
The plan aims to establish more centralized authority over the system, which holds about 400,000 immigration detainees over the course of a year, and more direct oversight of detention centers that have come under fire for mistreatment of detainees and substandard — sometimes fatal — medical care.
One move starts immediately: The government will stop sending families to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former state prison near Austin, Texas, that drew an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and scathing news coverage for putting young children behind razor wire…
LINK - MercuryNews.com
July 30, 2009
Report finds detainees’ rights routinely violated in U.S. immigrant detention
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been systematically violating its own minimum monitoring standards in regulating immigration detention centers across the country, according to a new report released Tuesday. The report is based on an analysis of previously unreleased inspection data on dozens of ICE facilities between 2001 and 2005.
In recent months, Facing South has reported on the problems in U.S. immigrant detention, highlighted by the mounting number of immigrant deaths in ICE detention centers. For the past year, reports of abuse, neglect, inhumane treatment, and inadequate health care in immigration custody have been surfacing across the country. Immigrant rights groups have criticized ICE's detention standards and inspection procedures, and have also steadily lodged complaints about detainees' rights being violated…
LINK - SouthernStudies.org
July 13, 2009
Feds should pay the bill for immigrants in our prisons
Just months after the passage of $787 billion in federal stimulus spending, some economists and Washington officials are keeping the door open for a second such plan to revive the economy. Meanwhile, in California, we are straining to balance the budget, made more cumbersome by a $26.3 billion gulf between revenue and expenditures.
If the Obama administration really intends to help states, for a start, it should make good on the federal government's promises. One area where the federal government can positively contribute is by providing California with full funding for housing illegal immigrant prisoners.
Years of inadequate border security have brought us to the point where states and localities have been overwhelmed with absorbing additional education, social services and public safety costs. It's alarming that roughly 12 percent of our state's inmates are illegal immigrants, each one costing taxpayers an estimated $48,536 per year to house and contributing to severe prison overcrowding…
LINK - MyDesert.com (The Desert Sun)
June 16, 2009
HDNet’s ‘Dan Rather Reports’ Investigates the Billion-Dollar Prison Prospecting Industry
HDNet's "Dan Rather Reports" presents a unique look at how your tax dollars are fueling the "recession proof," billion-dollar prison prospecting business. The episode reports on a federal agency charged with managing a detention system that this year alone will cost taxpayers $3.1 billion, a price tag that has doubled since 2003.
The federal government has more than 90,000 people in custody on an average night, and only 25,000 beds to put them in. So the U.S. Marshals, along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been outsourcing more than 65,000 detainees to a far-flung network of more than 1,800 state, local and private contract prison facilities. The Marshals Service itself has custody of tens of thousands of prisoners, but does not own nor operate a single detention facility
The number of Federal detainees has sky rocketed in recent years - more than 2000 percent since 1981 - and with the increasingly severe shortage of federal beds, enterprising local governments and private prison companies have been happy to fill in the gap — for a price. But it's the taxpayers who are ultimately footing the bill.
So, every morning, the routine begins. U.S. Marshals monitor the crush of inmates lining up for the vans that will take them to their court hearings. These vans will then have to take them back to a jail cell for the night and, more often than not, that cell will be at a county or city jail renting beds to U.S. Marshals with funds from the U.S. Government. It is a nation-wide, billion-dollar game of musical beds.
A retired supervisor with the U.S. Marshals Service, Al Patino remembers shuffling inmates to and from Hawaii where thousands of dollars were spent to fly prisoners on regular commercial flights. Even after Hawaii, when Patino was serving in El Paso, TX, the cost of housing and transporting prisoners was staggering. "I remember specifically signing checks between two, two and a half to three million on a monthly basis for that county," Patino said.
While the government is looking into questions about the increase in detention costs and how to decrease this taxpayer burden, the new government office in the Justice Department that was created to manage this massive system got derailed when immigration detention was moved into the Department of Homeland Security
"Dan Rather Reports: Bed of Controversy" premieres on HDNet, Tuesday, June 16 at 8:00 p.m. ET with an encore presentation at 11:00 p.m. ET to accommodate West Coast Prime Time.
About HDNet
HDNet (www.hd.net, twitter.com/hdnet) is a network that is original, thinks independently and delivers unique content and provocative, authentic programming that appeals to men of all ages, delivered in true high definition.
HDNet is the exclusive, high definition home for popular, original programming, including television's only HD news feature programs "HDNet World Report," and the Emmy Award winning "Dan Rather Reports," featuring legendary journalist Dan Rather. Only HDNet goes beyond the headlines to deliver real news that is redefining the way we look at our world. HDNet News is provocative, sometimes controversial and always relevant - telling the important stories of our time in-depth, with attitude and with independence.
June 14, 2009
Another private prison detainee dies in custody
An autopsy shows a detainee at a federal immigration detention center in south Georgia died of natural causes.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said Thursday 39-year-old Roberto Martinez Medina died of myocarditis, an inflammatory heart disease.
Martinez, a Mexican national, was being held at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin - which is operated by the same company that plans to open a similar facility in Gainesville, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Martinez died March 11 at St. Francis Hospital in Columbus…
LINK - AccessNorthGA.com
June 8, 2009
Early release for immigrant inmates raises questions
Juan Pedro Panuco said he and other immigrant inmates at Folsom State Prison have heard that California is so cash-strapped, some of them could get sprung early and then deported.
"Some of them are excited," said Panuco. He's not.
At 36, he's been in California since he was 18, is married to a legal U.S. resident and has three small children. He is nine months into a 13-month sentence he got for selling drugs…
LINK - SacBee.com
May 26, 2009
County OKs mega-prison for immigrant detainees
A private company's plans to build a mega-prison that could house immigrant detainees has received the go-ahead from the county.
Last month, after a temporary holdup over access to sewer lines, the county planning commission approved plans for Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America to build a "secure detention facility" on a 40-acre parcel in east Otay Mesa.
The parcel is close to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility and also to the private prison company's San Diego Correctional Facility, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement houses immigrant detainees who are awaiting deportation or a decision in an immigration case…
LINK - SignOnSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)
May 23, 2009
Bid to divert California prisoners to county jails denounced
Local officials have vowed to fight a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to shave $1 billion from the state budget by shifting 23,000 state prisoners to overcrowded local jails during the next three years.
"This presents a serious danger to public safety," said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. "We are putting in jeopardy gains that have resulted in crime plunging in L.A. to its lowest level in 50 years."
The state's 33 prisons house about 155,000 inmates and are under a federal court order to relieve overcrowding. If state officials do not address the problem soon, a panel of three federal judges could set a cap on new prisoners and order thousands released…
LINK - LATimes.com
May 18, 2009
Mentally ill detainees’ treatment at hospitals worries advocates
… Menasche said she was told in a meeting with Ziemer and ICE officials that ICE detainees are being automatically denied these rights, without any individual assessment of whether such a step is needed. The policy comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Menasche said.
She also said that before shackling a patient, the law requires that specific findings have to be made in the individual's case.
The detainees are taken to API from a private immigration jail in Otay Mesa run by Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in the nation. It has contracts to provide thousands of jail beds to the federal immigration agency…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)
May 11, 2009
O.C. may lose millions for jailing illegal immigrants
President Barack Obama's plan to redirect federal funds to the southwest border could mean Orange County stands to lose nearly $6.5 million in funds to house illegal immigrants with criminal convictions – while the state could lose $110 million.
Local and state officials have joined members of Congress who are up in arms about Obama's announcement last week to kill a program that has provided about half a billion dollars in federal funds to states and local municipalities for the incarceration of illegal immigrants with criminal records.
"We expect that we are going to have to fight a battle that we are too familiar with fighting," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state's Department of Finance…
LINK - OCRegister.com
April 22, 2009
Illegal immigration incarceration funding bill fails in committee
A bill by Sen. John J. Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes, to
bill the federal government for the cost of keeping illegal immigrant convicts in California prisons was rejected today by a state Senate committee.
Senate Bill 125 would require the state to demand full payment each year from the U.S. Attorney General for expenses tied to incarcerating illegal immigrants.
The Senate Public Safety Committee today voted 3-3 on the bill, which could be reconsidered before the legislative session ends…
LINK - MyValleyNews.com
April 13, 2009
State seeks more federal aid for cost of keeping illegal immigrant inmates
Reporting from Washington — Fifteen years after Congress promised that Washington would help states pick up the tab for imprisoning illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, California is receiving but a fraction — less than 12 cents on the dollar — of its nearly $1-billion annual cost.
The unfulfilled promise is perhaps the most glaring example of the federal government shortchanging California.
Officials from states greatly affected by illegal immigration long have argued that their taxpayers should not have to bear the burden for Washington's failure to control the border…
LINK - LATimes.com
April 3, 2009
Revealed: 90 immigrants have died in US custody in last 5 1/2 years
At least 90 immigrants have died while in US custody since October 2003, a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed Friday. At least 32 deaths occurred at facilities run by private contractors. The document — which has received little to no attention — also displays an apparent carelessness on the part of prison officials, whose records of the deaths change and omit inmate deaths over time.
Moreover, it shows that prison officials are now recording even fewer details about immigrants' deaths, possibly in response to periodic scrutiny of the list. A previous list that covered the period up until 2007 included the locations of deaths; the current list records either the location or the facility where the inmate was held, without any evident pattern.
The list also reveals that one private company, the Corrections Corporation of America, had at least 18 deaths under its watch, and that 32 of the 90 deaths occurred while immigrants were held in private prisons. 37 of the deaths occurred at regional facilities and 20 at federal centers…
LINK - RawStory.com
March 3, 2009
Despite a Crashing Economy, Private Prison Firm Turns a Handsome Profit
While the nation's economy flounders, business is booming for The GEO Group Inc., a private prison firm that is paid millions by the U.S. government to detain undocumented immigrants and other federal inmates. In the last year and a half, GEO announced plans to add a total of at least 3,925 new beds to immigration lockups in five locations. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the U.S. Marshals Service, which hire the company, will fill the beds with inmates awaiting court and deportation proceedings.
GEO reported impressive quarterly earnings of $20 million on February 12, 2009, along with an annual income of $61 million for 2008 – up from $38 million the year before. But the company's share value is not the only thing that's growing. Behind the financial success and expansion of the for-profit prison firm, there are increasing charges of negligence, civil rights violations, abuse and even death…
LINK - CorpWatch.org
March 2, 2009
CDCR to Discharge Deported Criminal Aliens to Federal Authorities
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is adjusting its parole policy to discharge criminal aliens from state parole after they have been deported by federal authorities. The new discharge policy, being implemented immediately by CDCR's Division of Adult Parole Operations, is expected to reduce the number of parolees returned to state prison for the federal violation of illegally entering the United States.
"California's previous policy of reincarcerating deported criminal aliens in state prison for brief stints on a parole violation has contributed to a revolving door effect that has increased overcrowding and costs to state taxpayers, without improving public safety. The federal government can and should seek significant federal prison sentences for those criminal aliens that return to California, "said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate…
LINK - CDCR.CA.gov
February 23, 2009
Wash. activist fights immigrant detention center
If it wasn't for Timothy Smith's intense opposition to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, the state might never have noticed that the private company that owns the facility was violating environmental rules.
The detention center - the federal government's prison-like complex in Tacoma that holds suspected illegal immigrants, often for months - was built near the former site of a coal gasification plant that left behind heavy pollution in the soil.
According to the state Department of Ecology, Boca Raton, Fla.-based The GEO Group violated an "environmental covenant" by not informing the state before moving any of the soil, which may be contaminated…
LINK - Seattle PI - NWSource.com
February 10, 2009
Private prison company CCA profits jump thanks to Calif, Feds
Private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America said Tuesday its fourth-quarter profit jumped 16 percent on increases in its per diem rates and prison population. Corrections Corp. earned $40.5 million, or 32 cents per share, compared with $34.9 million, or 28 cents per share, for the same quarter last year.
Revenue rose 8.8 percent to $414.4 million from $380.8 million in the year-ago period. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a profit of 30 cents per share on $420 million in revenue. The increase in revenue was mainly a result of a 5.2 percent increase in per diem rates, along with 4.1 percent growth in inmate populations.
Management revenue from federal customers rose 7.5 percent to $162 million, while management revenue from state customers increased 13 percent to $218.3 million. Corrections Corp. attributed the larger inmate populations to increased populations from the states of California and Idaho, as well as from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
LINK - Forbes.com
February 3, 2009
The Big Business of Family Detention
When President Barack Obama made it his first act in office to shut down Guantánamo Bay prison, he effectively ended one shameful chapter in our country's embarrassingly large book of human-rights abuses. It was not so much redemption as a reminder that this country has a long, long way to go when it comes to detention, due process, and the Geneva Convention. It's not just alleged terrorists that are suffering from our inhumane treatment. It's also children.
The United States is currently holding 30,000 immigrants in detention while they await hearings. The country operates three family immigrant detention centers, the most notorious of which is the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, a former prison currently under the private management of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The 600-bed center detains families who are awaiting asylum or immigration hearings, a major departure from past federal policy. Pre-September 11, families charged with immigration violations (which are not criminal violations) or who came to the country asking for asylum were generally allowed to live independently as long as they agreed to attend a hearing…
LINK - Prospect.org (The American Prospect)
February 3, 2009
Immigration detention center considered for L.A. area
The federal government is looking for contractors to build a possible detention center in the Los Angeles area that would hold up to 2,200 illegal immigrants and others suspected of violating immigration laws.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said last week that the agency was "exploring the feasibility of such a project," though she said no definitive decisions had been made.
"ICE is continuing to review its options to determine how to best meet the agency's future local and national detention needs," she said…
LINK - LATimes.com
December 8, 2008
Vigil seeks end to Hutton center contract
More than 100 people held a vigil Sunday night outside the Williamson County Courthouse to ask county commissioners to halt a contract with the T. Don Hutto Residential Center where dozens of immigrant children and families are detained.
"The practice of incarcerating families and children, with little regards to their civil rights, is destructive … to our community as a whole," retired pastor Milton Jordan said.
Protesters held signs that said "Prison is no place for children" and "Shut down T. Don Hutto" while singing the civil rights standard "We Shall Overcome," the Austin American-Statesman reported in its online edition…
LINK - Chron.com (The Houston Chronicle)
October 1, 2008
Feds say Wash. immigration guards weren’t checked
A privately run immigration lockup in Tacoma hired security guards without required preliminary background checks and then lied about it, according to authorities.
Sylvia Wong, a human relations specialist with GEO Group Inc., the private contractor that runs the Northwest Detention Center, was charged in U.S. District Court on Tuesday with lying to federal investigators when she claimed in April she did not falsely generate documents.
"Clearly this is a cause for concern," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
LINK - IHT.com (International Herald Tribune)
September 4, 2008
Officials in prison towns adjust to bad neighbors, tout benefits
Vicki Kilvinger, mayor of Florence, Ariz., admits when people hear the name of her town, they often think of prisons. Florence, Ariz., not only has nine prisons, but there's also Florence, Colo., home of the Supermax prison.
But Kilvinger and a number of officials who live in prison communities see a lot of advantages to housing a community of offenders inside fences.
They debunked concerns raised by some Pahrump residents leery that a planned federal detention center being built by Corrections Corporation of America will reduce property values, bring unsavory relatives and friends to town to visit the inmates, lead to escapes and not result in the good-paying jobs that have been promised…
LINK - PahrumpValleyTimes.com
August 5, 2008
Private Prison Co. Again Accused of Human Rights Abuses
A publicly traded company that runs private prison facilities across the country is again facing accusations of human rights abuses against inmates in its facilities.
Immigrants at a Washington State detention center run by the GEO Group, Inc. are being held in conditions that violate both international and U.S. law, says a new report released by the Seattle University School of Law and the human rights group OneAmerica.
The report concludes that immigrants at the Northwest Detention Facility, including refugees and asylum seekers, are being held in "an atmosphere of intimidation" which includes verbal abuse, sexual harassment, strip searches, and poor to non-existent mental and physical health care…
LINK - ABCNews.GO.com
July 26, 2008
Tancredo Asks Schwarzenegger to Cut Services to Illegals
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) today sent a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) asking him to look into the vast amounts of money spent on services for illegal aliens in California, despite the serious budget concerns the state is facing.
…In your budget message and proposal for the FY2009 state budget, you identified over $1,000,000 that could be saved by reducing the sentences of illegal aliens incarcerated by the state Department of Corrections. I think it is safe to say that that savings figure could be doubled if the state prohibited all sanctuary policies and all criminal aliens were reported to federal immigration authorities and deported after their first criminal offense.
There would be far fewer criminal aliens in the state correctional system if they were deported out of local jails after their first conviction. Yet the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that only 10% of inmates in local jails are ever deported…
LINK - BorderFireReport.net
July 25, 2008
ICE blocks 9-1-1 calls from T. Don Hutto
Outgoing 9-1-1 calls placed by immigrants detained at T. Don Hutto Residential Facility in Taylor will soon be blocked after Immigration Customs Enforcement changes the phone system in the former prison.
The block affects telephones used specifically by immigrants housed in the facility. Also blocked will be all incoming phone calls.
The change came as part of a change in the contract between Williamson County and Immigration Customs Enforcement billed as "Modification … relating to Low Cost Telephone Services" on the county commissioners' agenda Tuesday…
LINK - TaylorDailyPress.net
June 28, 2008
Valley prison officer mourned
Hundreds of law enforcement officials paid their respects to U.S. Penitentiary Atwater correctional officer Jose Rivera during a service Friday at St. Patrick's Parish in Merced.
Rivera, 22, of Chowchilla was killed June 20 after being attacked by two inmates and stabbed with a homemade shank. The two U.S. Penitentiary Atwater inmates suspected in the killing are from Guam.
Jose Palacios, director of the Guam Department of Corrections, identified the two inmates suspected in the killing as James Leon Guerrero and Joseph Cabrera Sablan, 40. Palacios said they were transferred off the small Pacific island because of their violent behavior at the prison there. Guerrero was implicated in the death of a correctional officer in Guam in 1987, though he was not convicted…
LINK - FresnoBee.com
June 13, 2008
11 Arrested in Sweep: Federal, state, local agencies check Shasta’s sex offenders
…About a half-dozen of the men were arrested at downtown Redding motels, said Redding police Sgt. Mike Wood. Called Operation FALCON, an acronym for "Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally," the sweep is part of an annual national event organized by the U.S. Marshals Service, Wood said..
Split into about seven teams, the law enforcement officers — from the Shasta County Sheriff's Office, Redding Police Department, Shasta County Marshal's Office, Shasta County Probation Department, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Marshal's Office and the Shasta County district attorney's office — conducted a countywide sweep, he said.
"It's kind of a zero tolerance," Wood said…
LINK - Redding.com
June 5, 2008
Suit over immigration jail overcrowding is settled
A class-action lawsuit alleging chronic overcrowding at an immigration jail on Otay Mesa was settled Wednesday. The lawsuit said the overcrowding at the facility, run by the Corrections Corporation of America for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, subjected immigration violators to health and safety risks. It also alleged the conditions violated due-process rights under the Constitution.
Before the suit was filed in January 2007, the jail was so overcrowded it was "triple celling" hundreds of detainees, the suit alleged. That involved putting three people into cells designed for two, with the third sleeping on the cell floor in a plastic shell or "boat."
The facility housed 1,000 people at one point. After the suit was filed, federal authorities moved out more than 100 inmates, according to the ACLU. According to ICE, the facility now holds no more than 700 people…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune Online)
June 3, 2008
Private Aurora ICE detention facility gets expansion OK
Plans for a $72 million expansion of a privately owned and operated illegal immigrant detention facility can proceed after Aurora City Council members said they weren't deciding federal immigration policy.
Anthony Paradiso, a property owner near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract facility, filed an objection over the planned expansion from 400 beds to 1,500 beds. He recently withdrew his objection and the council voted Monday to cancel it's review of the Planning Commission's approval of the plan.
About 20 people spoke in opposition, mainly on humanitarian grounds…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)
June 2, 2008
Colorado: Protesters Fight Immigration Center Expansion
Protesters taking over the Aurora Municipal Building Monday evening. They came to protest the city's expansion plans for the current immigrant and custom's enforcement holding center at 30th and Peoria. Many protesting say the center violates the rights of immigrants being held there.
"It's inhumane to the people that's working there", said Scott Kwasny of Jobs for Justice. Protesters say the company looking to build and run the ice facility the GEO group is an international company that doesn't help the local economy. "In the United States, GEO is very aggressive at keeping labor unions out", said Kwasny…
LINK - MyFoxColorado.com
June 1, 2008
A lethal limbo for migrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has repeatedly told Congress that it spends millions of dollars on medical care for detained immigrants facing deportation. But many of the immigrants are already sick when detained, and the public health nurses and doctors at the detention centers are too overwhelmed to treat them adequately.
Daniel Javier Solando, a Honduran immigrant turned over to ICE after serving time in a California state prison for bankruptcy fraud, witnessed Arellano's final days. He is appealing a deportation order and faces months, even years, in detention while his case makes its way through a court system burdened by a backlog of similar cases. As a result, Solando fears that he too might die because he won't get the medicine he needs to control his high blood pressure. Currently held at a detention center in Florence, Ariz., he has twice been rushed to an emergency room in the city. His medical records, provided to me by his pro bono attorney, indicate at least one of those visits might have been because he had a seizure…
LINK - LATimes.com (The Los Angeles Times)
May 27, 2008
County Jails Welcome Immigrants
The immigration crackdown is filling county jails across the country with immigrants who have been torn away from their jobs and homes. Tens of thousands of arrested immigrants are bedding down in county jails while they await court dates and eventual deportation.
As the immigration crackdown escalates, county commissions and sheriff departments are increasingly signing contracts with the federal government to house arrested immigrants. For the most part, county governments are eager to receive immigrants into their jails.
The per diem payments they receive from two federal agencies—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Marshals Service (USMS)—are covering shortfalls in county budgets, funding the hiring of new deputies, and paying for jail expansion projects. Although some localities are complaining of jail overcrowding and a diffusion of law enforcement priorities, more and more local governments are cashing in on the immigration crackdown…
LINK - Americas.irc-online.org
May 22, 2008
Companies Cashing in on People’s Prison Stripes?
Many small towns have come to depend on prisons for jobs, but are private prisons taking advantage of the incarcerated to turn a profit?
Or are correctional systems offering much-needed services to those behind bars?
For more, Farai Chideya talks with Louise Grant — vice president of marketing and communications for the Corrections Corporation of America — and Rose Braz, campaign director of Critical Resistance, an organization opposed to the expansion of prisons…
LINK - NPR.org (Audio Report & Interview)
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
May 21, 2008
Holding Hutto’s feet to the fire
When a coalition of community activists gathers in Taylor, Texas, this weekend, they'll trot alongside a barbed-wire fence (we're told the inner barricades have come down) and descend upon the controversial T. Don Hutto Residential Center, where a teddy bear has been placed on every bed and children's artwork lines the halls.
As they inch the bullhorns and signs reading "Texas shame" and "Children need sunshine too" closer to the center, the PR-scrubbed scene will be marred by something the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Corrections Corporation of America, and Williamson County doesn't want: hundreds of protesters shouting for the release of immigrant children and undocumented detainees.
The center — an immigrant-detention facility funded by Homeland Security, operated by privately owned CCA, and administered by the county — made news when it was criticized for incarcerating detainees in conditions that, until recently, were abysmal. The 470-bed detention center is one of two in the country that confine families on immigration violations while they await disposition of their cases…
LINK - SACurrent.com (San Antonio Current)
May 20, 2008
Corrections Corporation of America Announces Contract Award From the Office of Federal Detention Tru
NASHVILLE, TN, May 19, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) —-Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW: 25.55, -0.06, -0.23%), the nation's largest provider of corrections management services to government agencies, announced today that it has been awarded a contract by the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee (OFDT) to design, build and operate a new correctional facility located in Pahrump, Nevada, approximately 65 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. CCA's new 1,072-bed Nevada Southern Detention Center is expected to house approximately 1,000 federal inmates and detainees from the United States Marshals Service as well as potential populations from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Prisons…
Now we know why CCA is pulling out of it's State and County contracts… their Federal contracts seem to pay off better - and getting a "friend" on the inside [more: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] doesn't hurt either…
May 15, 2008
Immigrant crackdown creates need for more detention beds
AURORA, Colo. (Map, News) - A privately run immigrant detention center in suburban Denver that serves several Western states is looking to expand - anticipating a greater demand for beds as the federal government cracks down on illegal immigration amid concerns that local jails can't handle the burden.
The GEO Group wants to invest $72 million to expand its Aurora detention center from 400 beds to 1,500, even without a new operating contract from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
GEO stated in October it was expanding to meet federal agencies' need for detention space. At 90 percent capacity, GEO estimates the Aurora center - which houses undocumented immigrants from Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming - would generate about $30 million annually in operating revenue…
LINK - Examiner.com
May 4, 2008
Detention Dollars: Tougher immigration laws turn the ailing private prison sector into a revenue mak
At the beginning of the decade, the private prison industry was in a tailspin. After several profitable years in the 1990s, companies contracting prison beds to public corrections agencies were losing revenue at an alarming rate.
Capital earned during the 1990s had been poured into a speculative prison-building boom that backfired. State corrections agencies, a mainstay of what was then a relatively new industry, had begun pulling inmates out. There were too many prison beds and too few prisoners.
[…]
Then, in early 2000, CCA announced a lucrative new contract. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was to house 1,000 detainees at the company's San Diego Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa, built as part of the late-1990s construction boom. The agency agreed to pay a per diem fee of $89.50 for every person held…
LINK - SignOnSanDiego.com (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
May 4, 2008
Lawsuits raise questions about private prisons
As immigration laws have become tougher, the federal government has found itself with a logistical challenge: where to house a population that has swollen to more than 30,000 detainees. The solution? Turn them over to the private sector.
Detention contracts have helped turn once-ailing private prison companies into a multibillion-dollar growth industry with record revenues, healthy stock prices and ambitious expansion plans.
One of them, Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, has applied to build a nearly 3,000-bed prison in Otay Mesa, where it now runs a facility holding up to 700 detainees awaiting deportation or decisions on their immigration cases. The company is the nation's largest private prison operator…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
May 1, 2008
GEO Group Detention center neighbor protests expansion plan
A Florida-based property owner has stalled the $72 million expansion of a privately run detention center with a written appeal.
Anthony Paradiso, who owns a 10,000-square-foot building at 1010 Oakland St. in Aurora, sent a letter to the city's planning department protesting the recent decision to allow the extension of the current GEO Group detention facility by about 68,500 square feet and 1,100 in added capacity.
Paradiso, citing the negative impacts of such an expansion on local businesses and pointing to the lack of a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the expansion, formally protested the April 10 decision of the Planning Commission to approve GEO's plans in his letter dated April 18…
LINK - AuroraSentinel.com (The Aurora Sentinel)
May 1, 2008
Immigrants Challenge U.S. System of Detention
Immigrants who spent time in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit on Wednesday against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the agency issue legally enforceable regulations for its detention centers.
No enforceable standards now exist for the immigrant detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country.
The lawsuit, filed by the immigrants and their advocates in United States District Court in Manhattan, contends that the lack of such regulations puts hundreds of thousands of people a year in substandard and inconsistent conditions while the government decides whether to deport them, leaving them subject to inadequate medical care and abuse…
LINK - NYTimes.com (The New York Times)
April 30, 2008
Put for-profit detention centers on ICE (Opinion)
In 2007, the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) rounded up more than 30,000 immigrants in raids. While more than 186,000 immigrants were deported in 2006, an alarming 300,000 were detained in immigrant detention centers, such as the T. Don Hutto Center in Taylor, in 2007 alone. According to ICE, the purpose of immigrant detention centers is to "detain and remove criminal and other deportable aliens … in part of the strategy to deter illegal immigration and protect public safety."
Despite what ICE ostensibly promotes, these for-profit detention centers are not achieving their intended goals, as they do not create a disincentive for coming to the U.S. The risk of crossing over illegally is a small price to pay for the safety and high labor demand on the other side of the border. Additionally, undocumented immigrants are often hesitant to report crimes to authorities due to the fear of being detained, in which case detention centers may be hindering communities more than helping them.
Privatized detention centers are going up all over the United States as a way to deal with the growing number of undocumented immigrants. As a result, not only are we detaining immigrants in our country, but because of the move toward privatization, these facilities are able to make a profit from these prisoners. The industry leader, Corrections Corporation of America, has seen its stock price rise to as much as $22 a share, and in 2006 its revenue was $1.3 billion with profits of $105 million. According to industry experts, in order to make a profit these companies not only need to ensure that more prisons are built, but also need to keep them filled to an estimated 90-to 95-percent capacity rate. These for-profit detention centers demand immigrants' bodies and labor, and it is disturbing to think about how this demand will be met…
LINK - DailyTexanOnline.com (The Daily Texan - Online)
April 26, 2008
Hundreds riot at L.A. detention center for illegal immigrants
Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are investigating a riot that broke out Tuesday involving hundreds of immigration detainees at a county-run facility in Lancaster, where guards had to use tear gas grenades to restore order, authorities said today.
The Sheriff's Department contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to house about 900 detainees awaiting deportation at the Mira Loma Detention Center, according to sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.
Sheriff's and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel spent much of the night interviewing detainee witnesses, and some who instigated the riot may be prosecuted on criminal charges, authorities said…
LINK - LATimes.com (Los Angeles Times)
April 11, 2008
Authorities investigate reports of missing property at privately run immigration detention center
Authorities are investigating allegations of missing property from illegal immigrants held at the country's largest immigrant detention center here, officials said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials refused to comment on those allegations nor would they comment on a report that a government-issued gun also was missing at the detention center.
[…]
Carl Stuart, a spokesman for Management and Training Corp., the Utah-based company that runs the 3,000-bed detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, acknowledged that there's an "ongoing investigation." But ICE would not comment on whether anything or anyone is being investigated at the detention center.
April 10, 2008
GEO Group gets go-ahead on expansion plans in Aurora, Colorado
"Detention is an inhumane way to deal with a broken immigration system," said Miriam Pena, director of growth for the Colorado Progressive Coalition. "Detention is not cost effective … GEO is expecting to earn $30 million."
The Rev. Patrick Demmer of the Graham Memorial Community Church of God and Christ in Denver also addressed the crowd of protesters, questioning the underlying motives of the GEO Group corporation.
"There is something morally wrong about the privatization of prisons and detention centers … Courts and prisons cannot and should not be produced sufficiently by the private sector," Demmer said. "The very reputation of this company is very suspect … How did Aurora get involved with such a company in the first place?"…
LINK - AuroraSentinel.com (Aurora, Colorado)
April 8, 2008
Privatization Update: April 8, 2008
Privatization Update
March 31-April 6, 2008
Correctional Medical Services
April 1 - New Jersey has canceled its $85 million annual contract with CMS that has provided medical, dental and pharmaceutical services to state prisoners since New Jersey privatized its inmate health care system in 1996. The state Treasury Department notified CMS that it planned to replace it with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. CMS, whose contract expired, had sought a 4.73% increase to cover costs associated with caring for the 27,600 inmates in state prisons and an additional 14,000 inmates being held in county facilities until a state cell is available. The move ends a contentious 11-year relationship with CMS that was launched during the-Gov. Whitman's push to privatize government services. It comes months after the state auditor and the state inspector general issued separate reports critical of the company. Treasury spokesman Tom Vinz said the state believes the new arrangement will "improve both the bottom line as well as services."
April 5 - Fifteen current and former inmates at Young Correctional Institution filed a federal lawsuit alleging their medical care while behind bars was not only negligent but amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. In at least one incident in 2006, a CMS nurse used the same needle on multiple inmates, perhaps all 15, to draw blood and inject medicine, exposing all to blood-borne diseases including hepatitis C and possibly HIV/AIDS. At least three allege they have contracted hepatitis and possibly other illnesses since that incident.
Corrections Corporation of America
March 31 - Hawaii lawmakers have tentatively approved a bill ordering an audit of two CCA facilities in the wake of national media accounts alleging that the huge private prison company misrepresented statistical data to make it appear that CCA facilities had fewer violent acts and other problems than was actually the case. Hawaii pays CCA more than $50 million a year to house more than 2,000 men and women convicts in CCA prisons in Arizona and Kentucky. Senate Bill 2342 calls for the State Auditor to conduct performance audits of two of the three Mainland prisons that house Hawaii inmates, including reviews of food, medical, drug treatment, vocational and other services provided to Hawaii inmates. The audit also would scrutinize the way the state Department of Public Safety oversees the private prisons and enforces the terms of the state's contract with CCA. According to the bill, there has never been an audit of the private Mainland prisons that Hawaii has contracted with to house the state's inmates, despite the fact that deaths and serious injuries have occurred at several of the contract prisons on the Mainland. Time Magazine interviewed former CCA senior quality assurance manager Ronald T. Jones, who said CCA General Counsel Gus Puryear IV ordered staff to classify violent incidents such as inmate disturbances, escapes and sexual assaults as if they were less serious events to make the company performance appear to be better than it was. Jones said more detailed reports about the prison incidents were prepared for internal CCA use, and were not released to clients. CCA denied the allegations, which Time published as Puryear is being considered for a post as a federal judge.
April 2 - Five inmates at the privately run Marion County Jail II in Indiana filed a class-action lawsuit based on claims of improper medical treatment and access to medication, unsafe and inhumane conditions, and a broken grievance process. The suit names Corrections Corporation of America and Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson, who oversees CCA's contract to run the jail. The medium-security jail, which houses 1,043 inmates, serves as an auxillary to the county-run Marion County Jail. Attorney Paul Ogden also filed a suit against CCA in January on claims of dangerous work conditions and racial discrimination against several black nurses. That suit also raised concerns about the handling of medications for inmates, with some given incorrect medication and some denied prescription drugs.
Cornell
March 31 - More than eight months after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed 600 detainees from an Albuquerque, New Mexico jail, they say they won't house immigrants there again. The federal immigration agency says it has enough space elsewhere for detainees arrested. ICE was housing hundreds of detainees awaiting deportation at the Regional Correctional Center. That facility faced allegations by immigrant lawyers and criticism by a federal judge of sub-par conditions. Complaints included sweltering heat inside, frozen food and poor medical attention. After the agency yanked all of its inmates last summer, an ICE official said he had 'serious doubts' about the ability of Cornell to provide a safe environment for detainees. Cornell officials say they've worked hard to improve the facility and meet ICE's requirements. The company will continue looking for other customers for the 993-bed facility, which it leases from Bernalillo County. The U.S. Marshals Office currently houses detainees at the jail.
April 3 - Eight immigrant teenagers held at a facility for unaccompanied minors filed a federal lawsuit claiming they were abused and denied access to attorneys. The teens from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Cuba were being held at the San Antonio facility run by Cornell under a contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Undocumented minors caught by authorities in the U.S. fall under the care of ORR while their immigration cases are decided. Susan Watson, an attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said the teens were beaten and subjected to other excessive force in violation of their constitutional rights. At least one teen was knocked unconscious, but complaints to facility administrators were ignored, according to the lawsuit. The allegations raised by the immigrant teens were not the first against Cornell. Arkansas fired Cornell from the operation of a juvenile facility in November 2006 after finding employees inappropriately injected youth with anti-psychotic medication to control behavior. An in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed 600 detainees from an Albuquerque, New Mexico facility (this incident is addressed in the March 31 Cornell entry), citing failure to maintain safety, health and well-being standards there.
The GEO Group
April 1 - Texas officials want to know how a convicted felon escaped from a GEO Group owned jail. No one noticed he was gone for a full day, even though an eyewitness to the escape immediately told two GEO guards. The women who witnessed the escape said she was taken aback by the guard's lack of urgency. "He never asked me if he was white, Hispanic, African American. I described the clothing," she said. "All he asked was, 'Was he wearing tennis shoes?'" The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force was notified the following day of the escape and launched a massive manhunt for Esequiel Pena. Pena was being held in an 8-story level room at the GEO Group Holding Jail when he escaped. It is believed Pena squeezed through a fence and then made his way to a fire escape and disappeared. A concerned citizen spotted Pena at an apartment complex and called the Boerne Police Department. Pena was arrested without incident at the apartment complex.
Prison Health Services
April 3 - A registered nurse with the city prison system has been charged in a hit-and-run accident that killed a 15-year-old girl. Michelle Johnson, 40, was charged with manslaughter, homicide by vehicle and related offenses. Johnson, who has worked for PHS since 2006, struck Mary Otto. Otto had been walking on a median when Johnson allegedly ran a red light, hit Otto and kept driving. The teen was transported to an area hospital, but she died shortly after arriving. The next day, witnesses led police to a 2006 Toyota Sequoia, with considerable front-end damage, parked in the prison parking lot. Police seized the vehicle and later tied it to Johnson, who is not the owner of the vehicle. Johnson was suspended from her job.
April 3, 2008
Detention facility for immigrant kids sued for abuse
Eight immigrant teenagers held at a facility for unaccompanied minors filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming they were abused and denied access to attorneys.
The teens from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Cuba were being held at the 122-bed facility run by Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. under a contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Undocumented minors caught by authorities in the United States fall under the care of ORR while their immigration cases are decided…
LINK - DallasNews.com
March 7, 2008
Bush’s plan to cut payments protested
The next time a San Diego sheriff's deputy arrests a man who tries to steal a car, hauls him to a county detention center, starts asking questions and discovers he's in the country illegally, here's what will happen:
The tax-supported district attorney's and public defender's offices will handle his case, a tax-supported judge will preside if it goes to trial, he'll spend an average three weeks in the local jail at $100 each day, a state prison could house him for years at $121 a day, and tax-funded probation officers will follow his progress. Only after that will he be deported.
For years, the White House and border communities such as San Diego have argued over who should pay for all this. As a group of border states yesterday unveiled a report on the costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants linked to crimes, President Bush is again trying to eliminate all federal reimbursement for the task.
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com
March 4, 2008
Prison Privatization in America: The Lost Children
Web Editor's Note: This is a long read but well-worth the effort. However you might feel about immigration laws and immigrant detention centers, it becomes clear by reading this story that CCA's continued prison for-profit campaign and management track-record paints an even worse picture of corrections in the public eye and increases distaste for correctional officers as a whole.
Private companies began making inroads into the detention business in the nineteen-eighties, when the idea was in vogue that almost any private operation was inherently more efficient than a government one. The largest firm, Corrections Corporation of America, or C.C.A., was founded in 1983. But poor management and a series of well-publicized troubles — including riots at and escapes from prisons run by C.C.A. — dampened the initial excitement. In the nineties, C.C.A.'s bid to take over the entire prison system of Tennessee, where the company is based, failed; state legislators had grown skeptical. By the end of 2000, C.C.A.'s stock had hit an all-time low. When immigration detention started its precipitate climb following 9/11, private prison companies eagerly offered their empty beds, and the industry was revitalized.
One complication was that hundreds of children were among the immigrant detainees…
LINK - NewAmerica.net
March 2, 2008
Is it all immigrants’ fault?
Editorial: Crime would decrease if U.S. deported American-born citizens and replaced them with immigrants
When I write about efforts by city governments to use eminent domain and other property-rights-sapping and tax-spending "tools" to redevelop local cities (i.e., Santa Ana's Renaissance Plan), some readers cheer on these ham-fisted plans because they will "clean up" areas populated by illegal immigrants. When I write about law enforcement and jail issues, and infrastructure issues also, people call and blame the region's crime and congestion problems on – you guessed it! – illegal immigrants. Pick an issue – any issue, no matter how seemingly far afield from immigration – and I've heard from readers who have made an immigration connection.
There's always some truth to these arguments, but they rarely are made in a rational way, and they rarely are based on any careful look at the data…
LINK - OCRegister.com (Orange County Register)
February 25, 2008
Complaints filed against CCA-run San Diego private prison
A privately run immigration jail in Otay Mesa that is already the subject of two lawsuits is under fire again for allegedly mistreating female detainees, then retaliating when they complained to lawyers. One of the women has filed a formal complaint with the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, saying she suffered verbal and physical abuse and poor medical care during her three-week detention this month.
The allegations come about one year after a federal lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego alleging severe overcrowding and unsafe conditions at the jail, known as the San Diego Correctional Facility…
LINK - SignonSanDiego.com (San Diego Union-Tribune)
November 18, 2007
Privatization Updated (November 18, 2007)
An update on the true "cost" of private prisons in the United States.
California Privatization
Nov. 17 - A guard at the Leo Chesney Community Correctional Facility for women in Live Oak was arrested on suspicion of having sex with an inmate. Mark Steven Susoeff, 45, was arrested after an investigation by the Internal Affairs Division of the CDCR. The minimum security facility is owned and operated by Cornell but overseen by the state. Susoeff allegedly had sex with the inmate on two occasions, once in January and once in March. The state began to investigate after the inmate reported the incident. Susoeff was placed on administrative leave.
Corrections Corporation of America
Nov. 16 - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say an 8-year-old girl was separated from her pregnant mother and left behind for four days at a detention center set up to hold immigrant families together while they await outcomes to their cases. Officials say they had to transfer the Honduran woman because she twice resisted attempts to deport her and was potentially disruptive. ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said guards and ICE staff watched the child after her mother was removed from the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility. But others are critical of the agency's handling of the case, saying it put the child at risk and is another example of why the facility should be closed. Since opening last year, the Hutto facility has been exempt from state child-care licensing requirements. ICE officials told the state Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that parents would be at the facility with their children and would be responsible for their care, so state regulation wasn't needed.
The GEO Group
Nov. 16 - A former guard at the Val Verde Correctional Facility was arrested after he was indicted for violating the civil rights of an inmate in October 2006. Emmanuel Cassio is alleged to have walked into a cell and "struck the inmate with his fist." The inmate then made a derogatory remark to Cassiom who is then alleged to have punched the inmate a second time. If found guilty of the offense, Cassio faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, a fine not to exceed $250,000 and three years' supervised release.
Management and Training Corp.
Nov. 14 - In Willacy County, Texas, two detention center sergeants Juan Trevino and Albert Vasquez were arrested and charged with conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants between Sept. 1 and Nov. 8, 2007. Detention center officers Carlos Garcia, 36 and Ben Sanchez, 36 were also arrested and charged with attempting to drive 28 undocumented immigrants into the United States. Trevino and Sanchez are charged separately in a criminal complaint. Their arrests were the result of an investigation by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The four men worked as detention officers for Management and Training Corp. which provides security services for the Willacy County Detention Center. Officials allege that Trevino recruited Vasquez, Garcia and Sanchez to pick up and transport immigrants who were smuggled into the country through locations using MTC company vehicles. Garcia and Sanchez were wearing MTC uniforms and officials found a loaded .357 magnum pistol in the center console of the van when they attempted to drive the MTC F-450 van past a checkpoint. Customs and Border Protection agents at the checkpoint became suspicious because the ban was overcrowded, some passengers were sitting on the vehicle floor, none were shackled and many had luggage.
