On any given day, at least 34,000 people are detained in immigrant detention centers in the U.S. to meet an arbitrary lock-up quota dictated by Congress. Stopping the quota would be a giant step forward in ending our reliance on detention. Grassroots Leadership researches and exposes the role of for-profit prisons and their lobbyists in enacting the quota contributes to the growing national movement to stop immigrant detention.
August 21, 2013 by Holly Kirby
This week, National Immigration Forum posted their report, The Math of Immigration Detention: Runaway Costs for Immigration Detention Do Not Add Up to Sensible Policies, examining the cost to taxpayers of detaining immigrants, the majority of whom have no criminal record. Additionally, the report highlights how the private for-profit prison industry stands to gain the most from the growing number of immigrants in detention facilities.
The report paints a clear picture of the exorbitant amount of money the federal government continues to spend on detaining hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year, while funding allocated for alternatives to detention, which would keep immigrants in their communities with their families, remains dwarfed in comparison to detention.
[node:read-more:link]July 31, 2013 by Piper Madison
As we covered two weeks ago, the "comprehensive immigration reform" measures being debated in Congress could pour even more millions into the pockets of private prison companies like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. The bill passed by the Senate last month would increase funding for programs like Operation Streamline, which funnel immigrants into the federal criminal justice system are result in more immigrants behind bars. Now that immigration reform has been passed off to the House of Representatives, we've compiled a list of the the six representatives who benefitted the most from for-profit prison money in 2012.
July 10, 2013 by Piper Madison
June 5, 2013 by Piper Madison
February 15, 2013 by Bob Libal
Today's USA Today carried a disturbing article highlighting Immigration and Customs Enforcement's effort to increase the number of deportations through aggressive enforcement mechanisms.
Internal emails at the agency showed that ICE agents "were trolling state driver's license records for information about foreign-born applicants, dispatching U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to traffic safety checkpoints conducted by police departments, and processing more illegal immigrants who had been booked into jails for low-level offenses."
The former official whose emails are heavily quoted in the article is David Venturella, former assistant director at ICE. Guess where Mr. Venturella ended up after his term at ICE? Mr. Venturella is now the Executive Vice President for Corporate Development at GEO Group, according to his LinkedIn profile. GEO Group is a private prison corporation that heavily depends on federal immigration contracts to ensure a steady profit stream and employs a stream of heavily connected lobbyists in DC.
[node:read-more:link]February 6, 2013 by Piper Madison
In the last two years, major private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group have spent at least $4,350,000 on lobbying the federal government, primarily to win immigration-related contracts. What does that kind of money buy you? Some pretty lucrative contracts, apparently. In 2011, the federal government paid $1.4 billion to the two corporations, nearly a third of their total profits.
In fact, a 2011 report by Grassroots Leadership and Detention Watch Network found that private prison corporations operate nearly half of all Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention beds. What's more, private prison corporations are benefiting greatly from the criminalization of migration through programs like Operation Streamline.
It’s no surprise – or secret – that immigration reform which reduces detentions and deportations would be a threat to private prison corporations' business. Business Insider reported on February 2nd that in 2011, GEO Group CEO George Zoley told investors:
"At the federal level, initiatives related to border enforcement and immigration detention with an emphasis on criminal alien populations as well as the consolidation of existing detainee populations have continued to create demand for larger-scale, cost efficient facilities."
That same year, CCA stated in its annual earnings report that immigration reform
“could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."
So who are these wealthy private prison corporations looking to to win them immigration detention contracts? Below the jump are just some of the some the major lobbyists for private prison interests in Washington:
[node:read-more:link]December 13, 2012 by Piper Madison
December 5, 2011 by Bob Libal
Today, the New York Times called the immigration detention system "dangerously broken." More than 34,000 immigrants awake each day in the immigration detention system. The system relies heavily on for-profit corporations who own and/or operate prisons and county jails to detain migrants. According to the Times,"The paradigm is wrong. The system is dangerously broken." [node:read-more:link]
November 16, 2011 by Bob Libal
This week, we focus not on an individual lawmaker, but on a private prison facility itself. Meet Corrections Corporation of America's (CCA) Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia - our newest inductee into the Humpday Hall of Shame.
Stewart is the nation's largest immigrant detention center, and is located in state that recently passed a strict anti-immigrant law that is modeled after Arizona's infamous SB 1070. As NPR reported ("Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law," October 28, 2010) last year, CCA actively helped draft SB 1070.
[node:read-more:link]August 18, 2011 by Anonymous
From Victoria Lopez, ACLU of Arizona:
