Private prisons: GOP's real border shame

(image: FinalCall.com)

By Ana Marie Cox, Guardian UK

22 July 14

readersupportednews.org

Private prisons have taken up immigration as a profit center, based on assembly-line 'justice' of the Bush era – and kept alive by Republican presidential contenders who look the other way

igh-profile Republicans, from Governors Rick Perry and Rick Scott to even Chris Christie, have gone hoarse these past few weeks in denouncing the overflow of migrant detention centers at the US-Central American border as "the federal government's failure." All of them have ignored – or blissfully forgotten – that privatization, not government overreach, lies at the heart of America's suppurating arrest and deportation policy.

Despite growing evidence that the private prison industry is neither humane nor cost-effective, for-profit incarceration has increased dramatically in the past 10 years, and nowhere has the boom been more obvious – and had more devastating impact – than along the United States' border.

The tragedy of prison privatization is well-documented. For-profit institutions allows states to pass on overcrowding problems rather than solve them. There is lax attention to government regulations. This is a system designed for the benefit of its owners, not in the best interests of the state – or the prisoners themselves.

But almost half of all detainees held by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Marshall Service were held in private prisons as of 2012, and the rate of private incarceration of immigrants has grown at rates hundreds of times faster than the rates at government-run prisons. Go ahead, call in the National Guard and complain about the US border patrol. But the US Bureau of Prisons spent about $600m on private prison contracts in the last fiscal year, as private prisons have become the beneficiaries of ICE’s diversion of illegal immigrants to "civil detainment", or housing for those not suspected of additional crimes.

Indeed, it is President Obama's enforcement of Bush-era deportation policy, not the "amnesty" granted to so-called Dreamers, that's created the overcrowding and hellish conditions that so define the lives of border detainees.

In 2005, the Bush administration introduced bulk proceedings – unrelated immigrants tried and sentenced at the same time – and mandatory detention for illegal border-crossers, under a program known as Operation Streamline. This assembly-line justice, with up to 100 immigrants tried in a single court in a single day, continued under Obama, and eats up the time and resources of immigration lawyers and judges. (No wonder the children waiting at the border today are suing for representation.) Industrial justice leads to industrial detention: Operation Streamline funnels 30% of all those convicted into the waiting beds of detention centers run by one of the county's three largest for-profit prison operators.

Those not caught in the cookie-cutter courtrooms, and found guilty in a traditional hearing process, usually wind up in one of the country's Criminal Alien Requirement facilities. Every single one of them is run by private operators. And so almost every cry for "enforcement first" immigration reform – or "enforcement only" non-reform – puts a dollar into the pockets of private prison companies: In 2005, prior to the Bush administration's swift and harsh border policy, the federal government paid out $400m to GEO and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the two largest gaolers; in 2011 alone, those companies billed the US for $1.4b, with immigrants generating about $250,000 a day. And the long-term outlook is rosy: Federal government spending on immigrant detention in private centers has gone from $760m in 2002 to upwards of $1bn annually today.

In the circular economy of American politics, that money naturally first travels through the coffers of lobbyists and legislators. The private prison industry spent $45m on lobbying in the past decade, much of it going toward legislation that would simply incarcerate more people. With the war on drugs slowing, the industry has taken up immigration as a profit center: Companies contributed to the campaigns of 30 of the 36 lawmakers behind Arizona's "show your papers" law. The industry has also focused its attention on border states – Florida, California, and New Mexico – all of which face overcrowding in part due to waves of immigrants; even if state prison populations decrease, after all, stricter border enforcement creates federal detainees.

Republicans who are not immediately grandstanding on the shoulders of those trapped in private detention centers have posed as simply concerned – and angry at the federal government. But almost each figure blaming government ineptitude is caught up in the insidiousness of private prisons:

• Texas governor Rick Perry has actually bragged about finding common cause with Eric Holder in reducing Texas's prison population, but with Monday's deployment of 1,000 National Guardsman against "criminal aliens," he's on track to undo his legacy of reform – and keep alive the private prison system that works against it.


• Florida governor Rick Scott waded in on the migrant crisis rather gently on Friday, with a letter from his attorney general about children that might be transferred to Florida: "What medical services, if any, were provided," it asked, inquiring about infectious diseases and "those who may have come through the flawed federal system." Of course, that flawed system maybe be paid for by federal government, but at least a third of its detention centers are administered by GEO – which is both based in Florida and a significant contributor to Scott and the Florida Republican party. Just last night, the governor, an enthusiastic and over-promising promoter of private prisons in general, was arm-in-arm with the company's CEO at a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser.


• Chris Christie, quiet of late, simply told Iowans over the weekend that "I have great empathy for that situation." And that the children-at-the-border fiasco exists because "the United States that the federal government has refused to address this issue in any meaningful way." But Christie's tough-on-crime CV includes a close relationship to the euphemistically-named Community Education Centers, the president of which is Christie's former law partner and political advisor. CEC's laxly-monitored halfway houses have been tied to prison escapes and further crimes – including sexual abuse on-site – and it was the only bidder in a state contract to build an ICE facility. CEC is also the owner of Texas's most notorious detention center, where inadequate medical care and labor exploitation are the norm. So, yes, you would hope Chris Christie has "great empathy" for that kind of situation.

The immigration crisis at the border has blessed – or cursed – potential contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential race: the Perrys and Christies and Ted Cruzes and Marco Rubios have an opportunity, right now, to hone their rhetoric around the policy, cleaving a careful line between calls for more forceful border defense and sympathy for those suffering.  (Non-contenders can indulge in the luxury of pure xenophobia.)

But prison and detention privatization, the underlying factor in the ongoing humanitarian tragedy that is immigration policy, presents another obstacle to GOP hopefuls – even as the prison industry itself continues to pump money into politics and wring profit out of the ongoing crisis at the border.