immigrant detention

"Grassroots Leadership released a report on Wednesday that detailed lobbying on immigration issues by private prison corporations alongside a rise in for-profit detention since the creation of a controversial 'bed quota' in 2009.

During the press call, report co-author Bethany Carson said private prison corporations have seized a greater share of the immigration detention system since the onset of the immigrant detention quota." [node:read-more:link]

"A scathing new report says the private prison industry is getting fat off profits from detaining undocumented immigrants in subpar conditions – and Boca Raton-based GEO Group is one of the main culprits.

In the report, titled Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit With an Immigration Detention Quota, Grassroots Leadership, a nonprofit opposed to mass incarceration, says GEO Group and Correction Corporation of America (CCA) has successfully lobbied an acquiescent Congress for laws that increase the number of immigrants in its detention centers, leading to sharp increases in profits." [node:read-more:link]

According to a new report from Grassroots Leadership, the two largest private prison companies in the U.S. now run 70 percent of the ICE Detention System and are working hard to expand that share. 

The report, Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota, written by Bethany Carson and Eleana Diaz, also debunks a major piece of misinformation from the industry. Officials from CCA and GEO Group often claim they don’t lobby on issues that affect populations, but the report shows how much both corporations have invested lobbying relevant committees in Congress on immigration and detention issues that pad their bottom line.  [node:read-more:link]

"Clinton on Tuesday also referenced the so-called detention bed quota, which has expanded the number of immigrant detention beds the government is required to maintain to 34,000. A recently released report by the group Grassroots Leadership revealed that members of the private prison industry, which operates over half the beds in detention facilities, have spent millions combined on immigration-related lobbying efforts as Congress has dealt with the quota issue.

'I'm not sure a lot of Americans know that a lot of the detention facilities for immigrants are run by private companies,' Clinton said. 'They have a built-in incentive to fill them up, that there is actually a legal requirement that so many beds be filled. So people go out and round up people in order to get paid on a per-bed basis. I mean that just makes no sense at all to me. That's not the way we should be running any detention facility.'" [node:read-more:link]

Private prisons that have contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to keep a steady population of 34,000 migrants detained at all times, a study by the Austin, Texas-based Grassroots Leadership group found.

Grassroots Leadership researched detention conditions across the country and concluded that nine of the 10 facilities used by the Department of Homeland Security to house undocumented immigrants were private, and eight of them were owned by two corporations that have posted record profits since 2009. [node:read-more:link]

In Congress, Geo Group, Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies spend millions on lobbying. Much of that lobbying is focused on powerful members of the appropriations committee like Culberson, who received campaign contributions from CCA, which runs detention facilities including Dilley’s controversial South Texas Residential Center, which detains women and children.

A new study by the nonprofit Grassroots Leadership finds that the private prison industry has increased its share of immigrant detention beds by 13 percent since the 2009 quota was passed. For-profit corporations now operate sixty-two percent of ICE immigration detention beds.

At one point during the U.S. House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Saldaña tries to explain to the tea-partier Culberson that she can’t put people in detention “just for the heck of it.” [node:read-more:link]

Detained asylum-seeking mothers at a for-profit detention center in Texas have gone on a hunger strike seeking their release, Freedom Speech Radio News reports.

The women, many of whom fled their countries in Central America  out of fear of violence or persecution, have all passed the “credible fear test” and qualify as asylum seekers. Despite that, they are still held with their children — some as young as 2 years old — in the Karnes Residential Center, a prison-like facility in South Texas, waiting for their cases to be processed.

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According to a new report from the Grassroots Leadership, private for-profit prison corporations spent $11 million over six years to lobby Congress to keep a mandatory immigrant detention quota.

Today, 9 out of the 10 largest immigrant detention centers are private, with 8 owned by only two corporations, the GED Group and CCA. Since the end of 2007, the GEO Group has increased their profits by 244% and CCA by 46%. [node:read-more:link]

A report released last week by Grassroots Leadership, a Texas non-profit, details how private prison companies have spent five years lobbying the government, not only to maintain the quota, but to enact conservative immigration reform that would continue to ensure a steady flow of inmates into its detention centers.

“Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention,” says 62 percent of all ICE detention beds now are operated by for-profit prison companies. In fact, nine out of the 10 largest immigrant detention camps are private, with eight owned by only two corporations -- Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group. Those two corporations reaped about $500 million in 2014 alone.

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“The immigrant detention quota continues to be a prime example of how money and political gain can drive policy decisions," the report notes. "Those harmed by the immigrant detention quota have far less power and money: immigrants, their families, and the average American taxpayer." [node:read-more:link]

Immigration Policy Researcher and Organizer at Grassroots Leadership Bethany Carson co-authored a report released Wednesday that documented “the rise of for-profit detention of immigrants and increased lobbying to the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee in Congress.”

The report talks about “bed quotas,” the required minimum number of immigrants that must be detained at any given time, and how they increase profits for the private prison corporations.

According to the report, two corporations own eight of the nine largest privately owned immigration detention centers. Together, the two corporations, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group made almost $470 million in revenue in 2014 from ICE detention.

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We must put an end to these “bed quotas.” The only purpose they serve it so make profits for privately owned prison corporations.

These corporations are profiting off of suffering, and they are using their enormous returns to poison our politics. [node:read-more:link]