CCA No. 1 in Immigration Detention Contracts

SOURCE:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORT 2008

The nation's largest private prison company has partnered with the federal government to detain close to 1 million undocumented people in the past 5 years until they are deported. In the process, Corrections Corporation of America has made record profits. Critics suggest the CCA cuts corners on its detention contracts in order to increase its revenue at expense of humane conditions. Thanks to political connections and lobby spending, it dominates the industry of immigrant detention. CCA now has close to 10,000 new beds under development in anticipation of continued demand.

RELATED: OPERATION ENDGAME

DETENTION

Private detention centers – most of which are operated by CCA – are key to the federal government’s goal of “ensuring the departure from the United States of all removable aliens,” which are estimated to total about 12 million.

Houston, TX - In a business park aptly named Export Plaza, Corrections Corporation of America runs a complex of concrete buildings surrounded by razor wire. It’s here where immigrants, like Sergia Santibanez, are locked up until they agree to leave the country.

“When you first get there, they tell you you’re nobody,” said Santibanez, who spent 16 months there. She still breaks into tears whenever she recalls the experience.

In 2005, the mother of three U.S.-born children was giving several people a ride outside of Austin, where she had been living as legal resident since the 1980s. She got into an accident, and when the police came, she was arrested and eventually convicted for transporting undocumented immigrants, an aggravated felony that revoked her legal status. She served four months in a federal prison before ending up at CCA’s Houston Processing Center while the court decided whether she should be deported. Read More...

Renee Feltz on Democracy Now! talking about Business of Detention.

PROFITS

The math is simple. More demand for immigrant detention beds, plus more government funding, equals more business for Corrections Corporation of America. Every year since 2003, the company has made record profits.

CCA generated its highest revenue ever in 2006 when ICE doubled its detention beds from 19,500 to 27,500.

The company won contracts to provide about half of these new beds.

“We’ve never seen the wind at our back like it is today,” CCA’s President and Chief Executive Officer, John D. Ferguson said after discussing $1.3 billion in revenue during a May 2006 conference call with investors.

The infusion of detention center contracts marked a high point for the company after it had struggled for several years to expand. In 1999, independent auditors expressed doubt that CCA could even stay in business after the company suffered a net loss of $72 million mainly due to an abundance of empty beds.

That year, CCA spun off its real estate operations, Prison Realty Trust, from its correctional management services in a failed move that required a bailout from well-connected private equity firm, The Blackstone Group. The firm brought in Lehman Brothers and Bank of America to lend $350 million in exchange for four seats on the company’s board and 25 percent of company stock.

Blackstone’s Senior Managing Director, Thomas Saylak, convinced the Wall Street partners that the infusion of capital would allow CCA to “maximize growth prospects. Over time, we believe this new direction will be recognized and rewarded by investors.” Read More...

CONTRACTS

In San Diego, the ACLU lawsuit prompted ICE to move some of the detainees to other detention centers. It also prompted CCA to propose constructing a new facility nearby that would hold four times more detainees. Thus, rather than being penalized for overcrowding, the company may even end up winning a new contract.

San Diego, CA - In 2006, the CCA-run San Diego Correctional Facility was so crowded that three immigrant detainees lived in cells designed for two. So where did the third person sleep?

“They would put what they called a boat, a plastic unit, on the floor in the only floor space available in the room – beneath the toilet,” explained Tom Jawetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Prison Project.

The detainees soon became restless from living in cells where they could barely move around. When new detainees were brought in, they nearly broke out into a riot and had to be subdued with teargas. By the time Jawetz filed suit to stop the overcrowding, CCA was housing overflow population in the facility’s day rooms.

Over the years, ACLU has sued CCA for overcrowding and substandard medical treatment. ACLU lawyers say that CCA squeezes profit from immigrant detention contracts by scrimping on the already minimal services it is required to provide. Unlike prison contracts, immigrant detention contracts only provide for housing, food and medical services, not rehabilitation and education services.

CCA makes the most money from facilities that are full or beyond capacity. In San Diego, the ACLU lawsuit prompted Immigration and Customs Enforcement to move some of the detainees to other detention centers. It also prompted CCA to propose constructing a new facility nearby that would hold four times more detainees.

Thus, rather than being penalized for overcrowding, the company may even end up winning a new contract. “We have an existing relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal customers and we want to be able to maintain that relationship,” CCA spokesman, Steve Owen, told the San Diego Union Tribune.

CCA also got away with providing only substandard medical care. At the San Diego facility, conditions were so bad that the Department of Immigration Health Services was forced to take over.

“The DHS concluded CCA’s provision of medical care was deficient and that CCA was attempting to increase its profits by decreasing the medical services to detainees,” said Jawetz. Read More...

CONNECTIONS

CCA plays the game of politics like a pro. After all forty percent of its revenue comes from federal contracts. The company backs key politicians who support an immigration crackdown, and has intensified its lobbying in order to influence those still on the fence.

Washington, D.C. - CCA plays the game of politics like a pro. After all forty percent of its revenue comes from federal contracts.

The company backs key politicians who support an immigration crackdown, and has intensified its lobbying in order to influence those still on the fence. For good measure, it hires former prison and immigration officials to coordinate its federal relations.

When Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on comprehensive immigration reform, CCA backed lawmakers who found common ground on the issue of funding detention. 2007 was the first year CCA’s Political Action Committee, otherwise staunchly Republican, donated $15,000 to the Democratic Congressional and Senatorial Committees, according the Federal Election Commission. However, the company gave twice this amount to the GOP.

The rest of CCA’s political giving went directly to lawmakers who determine detention funding through their positions on the appropriations committee in the House and Senate. In 2008, the committees approved a $2.3 billion budget for ICE detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, including funds for an additional 4,870 new beds.

More than half the senators backed by CCA’s PAC are on the appropriations committee, and four of them are on the subcommittee on Homeland Security. The company was most generous with the minority ranking member, donating $5,000 each to Thad Cochran (R-MS), and the Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

In 2006, it gave $1,000 to committee member, Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), who nonetheless remains critical of mass detention based.

“In Orange County, we’ve had electronic monitoring devices and more supervision when we’ve let people out of detention centers, its been a most cost effective way to deal with a certain portion of the population, especially women with children, the elderly, and the ill,” said Sanchez. “I think there are ways we could use appropriate alternatives to keep the costs down and still monitor where people are.”

One CCA-backed appropriations committee member deserves special mention. Former Tennessee governor, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) received $31,200 from 2003-2008 from the Nashville-based company and its employees, spouses and their subsidiaries, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Alexander’s history of supporting CCA includes endorsing its failed bid in 1985 to take over the Tennessee prison system. Read More...

The Big Business of Family Detention

SOURCE: Dorinda Moreno

From:

It's not just alleged terrorists who are suffering from our inhumane treatment of detainees. It's also children.

Courtney E. Martin | February 2, 2009

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.

The transition from "catch and release" to "catch and detain" has been riddled with controversy. Immigrant detention became a boom business under the Bush administration, which supplied the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency's (ICE) $1 billion-plus detention budget. Private contractors get $200 a head per day for family detention and lobbied hard for the policy shift: Mother Jones reports that "in 2004, when Congress passed legislation authorizing ICE to triple the number of immigrant detention beds, CCA's lobbying expenditures reached $3 million; since then, it has spent an additional $7 million on lobbyists."

The bottom line is not just economic, however. Children and families have suffered inexcusable indignities under this new policy, which treats them like convicted criminals instead of asylum-seekers and potential citizens. Despite the fact that myriad human rights and community groups -- such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Immigration Studies -- have condemned the practice of detaining children in prison-like environments, ICE is seeking to open three new family detention centers, doubling its capacity. As of this writing, ICE still hasn't released the names of the winning contractors and/or locations, but the announcement is expected to be made sometime this year with the new facilities scheduled to open in 2010.

Imagine this: 7- and 8-year-old children dressed in hospital scrubs, savoring the last few minutes of their one hour of recreation time a day before they are brought back to their family cells, the heavy metal door closing them in for another painfully boring stint. No toys allowed. This nightmare was a reality for too many children when Hutto first opened in 2006. The Women's Refugee Commission, a New York-based nonprofit that conducted a study in collaboration with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, found that "immigration detention facilities for families in this country may be re-traumatizing families and their children, many of whom are seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries." The commission reports that on a visit to the facility, one child slipped a note into the hand of an outside visitor that said, "Help us and ask us questions."

Thanks to lawsuits against CCA, children can now wear pajamas, play, and attend classes during the day, and pregnant women are receiving some neonatal care, but the spirit of incarceration continues. Immigration officials claim that family detention is necessary in order to prevent immigrants and asylum-seekers from fleeing the country. However, even ICE admits that alternatives -- like its own pilot program in 2004 where specialists were assigned a limited caseload of detainees whom they monitored using home visits and telephone calls -- have a 94 percent appearance rate overall.

Family detention centers may provide a meager 6 percent reduction in flight risk, but this country pays a far bigger price in lost integrity. We lock up children and their families -- many of whom have suffered economic deprivation, exploitation, and oftentimes, domestic and sexual abuse -- before they've even had a hearing as to their immigration status.

Renee Feltz, a multimedia investigative journalist based in New York City who co-runs a project on the business of immigrant detention, reports that waiting in such unbearable conditions often brings immigrants -- especially women with children -- to their knees. "Many of the people we talked to are so miserable in these facilities that they will eventually agree to being deported even if they think they have a legitimate claim to asylum," Feltz says. "They just want to get out as fast as possible."

In this way, one of the first lessons we teach potential new citizens about America is one of cruel, Orwellian hypocrisy. You must earn your freedom, if at all, via imprisonment. Dignity comes only by bearing undignified conditions. The last administration's obsession with family values is glaringly absent from this Civics 101 course. We welcome children who have heard tall tales of the abundance and liberty of America with rehabbed cells and 10 minutes to wolf down an inadequate lunch of cheap starches on a prison tray.

First and foremost, immigrant family detention must stop. On Jan. 21, Grassroots Leadership, a Southern community organizing group, launched a campaign with this goal, calling it 100 Actions in 100 Days. Given the new administration, hope for immigration reform, and a renewed focus on addressing corporate corruption, it's an opportune time to reactivate the country around this issue.

But there's an even bigger picture here that we must not lose sight of. Immigrant detention, on the whole, is riddled with corruption, inefficiencies, and indignities. Comprehensive immigration reform is a vital component of our country's next few years of healing and reform.

And an even bigger picture still: We live in a society that has bought blindly into the privatization and proliferation of our prisons. It's not so surprising that we force immigrant children to live in cells and wear hospital garb when you consider the national tendency toward incarceration, racism, and xenophobia.

We've got a lot to heal. Let's start by abolishing family detention centers immediately.