[Ppnews] Private prison companies are salivating

Fri May 26 08:53:18 EDT 2006

The Immigrant Gold Rush

By Forrest Wilder, Texas Observer
Posted on May 22, 2006, Printed on May 26, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36282/

For the savvy investor looking for a growth 
industry, South Texas offers a sure thing. The 
business calculus is simple: More immigrants than 
ever are being apprehended. That means the 
federal government needs more detention centers 
and more people to run them. No matter how the 
national debate on immigration plays out in 
Congress, the corporations that have moved into 
the business of building and operating detention 
centers are likely to see a steady stream of revenue for years to come.

The United States Marshals Service, for example, 
is now soliciting bids from private companies to 
build, own, and operate a 2,800-bed detention 
facility near Laredo. The "superjail," as it has 
come to be called, will serve the federal 
criminal court in downtown Laredo, which is 
loaded up with immigration-related cases in what 
the Marshals Service calls an "emergency 
[detention] situation." The $100-million 
superjail is expected to be one of the largest 
private detention centers in the nation, and will 
join a growing chain of county and local jails 
and private detention facilities all over Texas 
that coordinate with federal agencies to hold 
immigrants -- some destined for trials or hearings, others for deportation.

 From downtown San Antonio to the banks of the 
Rio Grande in South Texas, for-profit companies 
run seven detention facilities for the Marshals 
Service and for Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement, a division of the Department of 
Homeland Security. ICE (formerly the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service) holds noncitizen 
detainees waiting for a hearing in the civil 
immigration courts, or facing immediate 
deportation. The Marshals Service is responsible 
for housing both citizens and noncitizens 
awaiting trial or sentencing in federal criminal court.

"It's the immigrant gold rush in South Texas," 
says Bob Libal, co-director of Grassroots 
Leadership, an Austin-based nonprofit that 
monitors the private prison industry. "In Texas, 
almost all of the current prison expansion is 
occurring to house immigrant detainees, and 
that's primarily located in South Texas along the 
border." There are at least 7,000 newly built or 
proposed ICE and Marshals Service beds in Texas 
for immigrant detainees, according to Corrections 
Professional, an industry journal. In the early 
1980s, ICE (then INS) operated zero beds in 
Texas; the Marshals Service, no more than 3,000 in the entire country.

Nationwide, the number of ICE detainees went from 
7,444 in 1994 to about 23,000 now; during the 
same period, the Marshals Service's population 
more than doubled to an estimated 63,000. Just in 
the last two years, Congress has authorized 
40,000 new ICE beds over the next five years and 
given the Marshals Service funding for another 
4,000 to 5,000. And the President's proposed 2007 
budget calls for a $452 million increase in ICE 
funding, including money for another 6,700 beds. 
One of the companies to benefit from the 
government's building -- and privatizing -- binge 
is KBR, a Halliburton Co. subsidiary, which in 
January was awarded a contract worth up to $385 
million to build temporary immigrant detention 
facilities for the Homeland Security Department 
in case of an "emergency influx of immigrants," 
according to a KBR press release. The top 
companies running South Texas detention centers 
are the Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), GEO 
Group Inc., and Emerald Correctional Management.

Libal says a "perfect storm" explains the growth 
in the detention industry. "First, you have this 
kind of anti-immigrant sentiment coming out of 
Washington at the federal level; second, you have 
increased zealotry from the U.S. Attorney's 
office to prosecute people criminally for 
extremely minor immigration crimes; and third, 
you have these private prison companies that are 
cashing in on the immigration incarceration boom."

The origins of the modern immigrant detention 
complex can be traced to the mid-1990s, when 
Silvestre Reyes, then-head of the El Paso Border 
Patrol Sector (now a Democratic congressman from 
El Paso), initiated "Operation Blockade" -- a 
strategy of concentrating enforcement agents to 
snag immigrants once they cross the border. This 
drove up the number of apprehensions and set in 
motion a militarization of the southwestern 
border. The budget for border enforcement went 
from $1.2 billion in 1995 to $4.7 billion in 
2006, and the number of Border Patrol agents 
doubled. In addition, sweeping immigration reform 
laws passed in 1996 by Congress and signed by 
President Bill Clinton allowed the deportation of 
any noncitizen convicted of such crimes as drunk 
driving, hot-check writing, and shoplifting -- 
even if the crime occurred before the law went 
into effect. The 1996 legislation also required 
mandatory detention of any illegal immigrant 
deemed a "criminal alien," a noncitizen convicted 
or even suspected of illegal activity.

But in recent years, the Homeland Security 
Department has forged into new territory. With 
its Secure Border Initiative, the agency seeks to 
find and deport certain noncitizens, whether they 
are seized at the border or are living within the 
United States. One feature of the initiative is 
the elimination -- by this October -- of the 
so-called "catch-and-release" policy, in which 
undocumented immigrants are released on their own 
recognizance and given a notice to appear in 
immigration court at a later date. (About 40 
percent failed to make an appearance in 2005, 
according to the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review.)

The Office of Detention and Removal, a sub-agency 
of ICE, calls its 10-year plan "Endgame," the 
goal of which is to "remove all removable aliens" 
by 2012, including the 590,000 people who have 
ignored deportation orders and the 630,000 
"criminal aliens" serving sentences in jail or 
prison at any given time. The 6,700 new ICE 
detention beds requested in the 2007 budget 
represent a much greater number of potential 
deportees -- that's enough to allow an additional 
134,000 people per year to be moved through the 
system. John Ferguson, CEO of Corrections Corp., 
spoke to analysts during a conference call on 
company earnings in February about the 
"significant opportunities" the Secure Border 
Initiative would bring: "ICE bed needs under the 
Secured Border Initiative [sic] potentially could 
be all private. ICE does not build their own 
facilities." Libal, the private prison critic, 
says companies like CCA "are right to be 
optimistic. They have the potential to get a whole slew of new contracts."

The Secure Border Initiative also puts into place 
another controversial enforcement strategy: 
"expedited removal," which requires mandatory 
detention and rapid deportation of certain 
undocumented border-crossers. Originally 
authorized under the 1996 law, expedited removal 
was set up in the McAllen and Laredo sectors as a 
pilot project called "Texas Hold 'Em" in August 
2004. It has recently expanded to the full 
lengths of the Mexican and Canadian borders. The 
Homeland Security Department initially targeted 
Texas because the state receives the vast 
majority of non-Mexican immigrants. (Unlike 
Mexicans -- 92 percent of which are rapidly 
returned after apprehension -- "other than 
Mexicans" cannot be quickly sent home and are 
often released for lack of detention space.) 
Under expedited removal, undocumented 
non-Mexicans captured within 100 miles of the 
border who have been in the country for less than 
14 days are held in detention facilities until 
they can be shipped back to their nation of 
birth, a process that can take a few days to a few months.

These detainees have no right to an attorney and 
are barred from returning to the United States 
for at least five years. Each person subject to 
expedited removal is supposed to be evaluated by 
an immigration-enforcement agent to ensure that 
they do not fall into a protected category, such 
as a bona fide asylum-seeker or a lawful 
permanent resident. Immigration advocates and 
attorneys worry that these agents lack the 
training or incentives to properly evaluate an immigrant's rights.

"It's a very summary procedure, lacking in the 
fundamental due process rights," says Meredith 
Linsky, director of South Texas Pro Bono Asylum 
Representation, a Harlingen-based organization. 
She argues that many individuals with a legal 
right to enter or remain in the United States are 
swept up by expedited removal and whisked out of 
the country. "Everything has changed" since she 
first arrived in Harlingen in 1989, Linsky says. 
"In 1989, everyone that was apprehended was given 
a bond, given the opportunity to go in front of 
an impartial judge. ...Today people are 
apprehended, and for the most part they are 
arrested, judged, tried, and removed in one fell 
swoop by the [Border Patrol] officer at the 
border with no legal representation."

Nina Pruneda, an ICE spokeswoman, hotly disputes 
Linsky's portrayal of the process. "First off, 
they're not low-level officers," she says. 
"Second of all, they are trained professionals in 
the expertise of customs and enforcement law; 
third, everyone is afforded the due process of 
law -- they can go up before an immigration 
judge; fourth, a lot of people do not necessarily 
interpret themselves as who they are." At 
present, Pruneda says, the San Antonio district, 
which covers 54 counties in Texas, is removing 
500 to 600 people per week under the deportation program.

Pruneda argues that expedited removal, if run 
efficiently, cuts down on the time individuals 
spend in detention, freeing up detention space 
for illegal aliens who pose a threat to public 
safety. She says the average length a person on 
the expedited removal track spends in detention 
has been reduced from 90 days to 15 to 20 days. 
Still, the number of people subject to mandatory 
detention under the new rules is enormous. 
Immigration agents catch an estimated one million 
illegal entrants per year, with additional untold 
tens of thousands who slip through. Already, in 
an indication of what may happen in other border 
regions, South Texas detention centers are 
chock-a-block with non-Mexicans being processed for expedited removal.

Nearly 100 percent of the detainees in the CCA 
facility in Laredo and in a GEO Group center in 
Pearsall are being kept under expedited removal, 
says David Walding, interim director of the new 
Bernardo Kohler Center in Kyle, a nonprofit that 
provides assistance to detainees in South Texas 
detention facilities. But, he adds, echoing a 
nearly universal sentiment among advocates, "A 
lot of these people who get removed are just 
going to turn around and come right back."

If they do, their chances of being prosecuted on 
immigration-related criminal charges are greater 
than ever. Over the past five years, the federal 
courts' Southern District of Texas, which serves 
the region from Houston to Laredo, has exploded 
with noncitizens accused of federal immigration 
crimes. In 2005, the district tried 4,802 
defendants accused of major immigration crimes, a 
155 percent increase over 2001 levels, according 
to statistics compiled by the federal courts. The 
number of defendants charged with petty 
immigration offenses in southern Texas was up 260 
percent between 2001 and 2004.

Together, the Southern District and the Western 
District of Texas, the other federal court 
district, had 80 percent of all minor immigration 
defendants in the nation, the majority of which 
were charged with illegal entry. According to 
Marjorie Meyers, the chief federal defender in 
the Southern District, more than 50 percent of 
the cases her public defenders handle each year 
in the border courts are "illegal entry" and 
"illegal re-entry," infractions that are 
committed hundreds of thousands of times each 
year at the border as people cross illegally back and forth.

Immigration attorneys and advocates have watched 
with a mixture of amazement and apprehension as 
the U.S. Attorney's office has increasingly 
focused on nailing border-crossers. "When I first 
started practicing immigration law many years 
ago, the only people that were prosecuted for 
illegal entry were people who had entered before 
or people who were doing something else wrong 
when they were entering," says Barbara Hines, 
director of the immigration law clinic at the 
University of Texas Law School. "I think that's 
really changed -- the people who are being 
prosecuted [now] are coming for the first time, 
who have no other criminal record, and they are 
being prosecuted and serving jail time." 
Sentences can range from probation to up to 20 
years if the individual has an "aggravated felony" on record.

Nancy Herrera, executive assistant U.S. attorney 
for the Southern District, says that district 
attorneys in border districts decided in 2002 to 
take more cases to end the "revolving door" of 
repeat immigration offenders. "It's an effort to 
deter illegal entry to the United States while 
protecting the border," she says. But their 
defense counterparts have their own theories. "It 
is clear, and I have heard the U.S. Attorney's 
office say, that they choose to bring an illegal 
entry charge so they're on the books," says 
Myers. While an illegal entry charge usually 
carries no more than 30 days in jail, most 
noncitizens convicted of illegal re-entry receive 
between about four and eight years in jail if 
they have priors on their record, including 
immigration crimes, says Meyers. Lisa Brodyaga, 
an attorney in San Benito, elaborates: "A lot of 
the people they are prosecuting are 
garden-variety undocumented. The reason I think 
they are doing that is so if they catch them 
again, they can give them prison time." Illegal 
re-entry is a felony. As a result, she says, they 
are "pushing undocumented people deeper and 
deeper underground ... so they are more and more exploitable."

The stepped-up prosecution of immigration 
violations has obvious effects on the court 
system. An Observer analysis of data obtained 
through a Freedom of Information Act request 
shows that in 2004, the most recent year for 
which statistics are available, at least 71 
percent of the 8,785 criminal charges at the 
federal courthouse in Laredo were 
immigration-related, the vast majority for 
illegal entry. In fact, nationwide, immigration 
has recently surpassed drugs as the #1 federally 
prosecuted crime. Good-bye War on Drugs, hello War on Immigration.

As the number of criminal prosecutions increases, 
the civil immigration courts then receive more 
noncitizens branded as "criminal aliens." "Most 
federal immigration enforcement crimes also have 
deportation grounds," explains Lee Teran, a law 
professor at St. Mary's University Law School in 
San Antonio, which makes it easier for the 
government attorney, a Homeland Security 
employee, to secure an order of removal in immigration court.

Take, for example, the case of Maria Cardenas, a 
27-year-old resident of Laredo. She is a lawful 
permanent resident who has lived in Texas since 
she came from Mexico at 15 with her parents. 
Employed as a truck driver, she was getting ready 
to make a run from Laredo to San Antonio in her 
18-wheeler last July. At a gas station, an 
undocumented man from Mexico asked her for a 
ride, telling her he had diabetes and needed to 
work for his family. Cardenas agreed, later 
saying she felt sorry for the man. Cardenas knew 
she was doing something illegal, but her 
compassion got in the way of sober thinking.

At a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 35, 
agents discovered the man hidden in Cardenas' 
truck. She was arrested and taken in front of a 
magistrate judge in Laredo the next day. She 
received one year of unsupervised probation and 
thought the ordeal was over. But then Cardenas 
was taken into ICE custody and put in an 
immigrant detention facility run by the GEO Group 
in San Antonio. Now, she faces deportation to 
Mexico and a bar on returning for 10 years unless 
her lawyer can muster a legal defense allowing 
her to remain. If she were to return, she could 
face up to 20 years in prison. Winning Cardenas' 
case, her attorney says, will not be easy.

What will she do if she has to go back to Mexico? 
"I have a life here," she says in an interview, 
beginning to cry. "There's nothing in Mexico for 
me. I've always worked and paid my taxes. I've 
been a good resident." For each day of Cardenas' 
10-day stay in detention, she likely fetched 
between $35 and $65 gross profit (the going rate in the region) for GEO Group.

As Texas moves deeper into the corporate-run 
detention center business, immigrant advocates 
worry about how much public scrutiny will be 
possible. "I think that immigrants are definitely 
more exploitable than even state or federal 
prisoners because they often have less access to 
resources and they are often deported after their 
detention," says Libal. "They tend to be a 
transient population; they tend to have language problems."

And once new detention centers are built, it is 
likely that the facilities will be open for 
business indefinitely, private prison opponents 
say. "They might pitch [new prisons] as a way to 
solve some temporary need," says Libal, "but once 
they build the prisons, they will always fill the 
beds, especially with private facilities." He 
points out that prison companies usually want to 
sign contracts with federal agencies that 
guarantee a minimum number of prisoners per 
month, legally binding the government to supply 
the bodies. In Laredo, the superjail has 
engendered the enthusiastic bidding of five 
corrections outfits, including CCA and the GEO 
Group, which are jostling to corner the emerging 
borderland markets. CCA has offered to pay the 
$100 million construction cost if it wins the 
contract, while GEO Group told Webb County that 
the company would give $1 million to the 
impoverished county for indigent care if it prevails.

So far, the rise in the immigrant detention 
business has received little attention as the 
national debate splits the business community and 
leaves Republican ideologues arguing with 
pragmatists. But the Office of Detention and 
Removal is hard at work on what it calls the 
"Endgame." For the corporations involved in 
immigrant detention, the endgame is the beginning of something big.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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