U.S. immigrant policy: Detention for dollars
Private corrections companies are paying lawmakers and have a financial incentive to keep scores locked up
Alonzo was driving home from the hospital where his baby girl had just been born, when he heard a police siren blare behind him. A Tucson, Ariz., police officer pulled him over, citing an incorrect lane change.
The encounter quickly spiraled into his detention by Border Patrol. After a brief court hearing, he was sentenced to 30 days in a detention facility for unlawful re-entry into the United States. This facility, the Florence Correctional Center, is owned by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA); their 2013 profits totaled a record $300 million. Alonzo’s one-month detention bolstered these profits.
It’s no wonder why. These corporations deliver hefty campaign contributions to congressional members and also spend significant funds on federal lobbying. According to Influence Explorer, a website affiliated with the open-government nonprofit Sunshine Foundation, from 1999-2014 CCA spent $19 million in federal lobbying, outspending all other for-profit prison corporations. GEO Group, the second-largest provider of immigrant detention services to the federal government, spent over $3 million between 2004-2013, also according to Influence Explorer.
Both corporations have successfully lobbied for policy that leads to higher rates of detention — not for public benefit, but for profits. The Detention Watch Network says about 43 percent of CCA’s revenue is generated through contracts with the federal government — and the detention of undocumented immigrants is the company’s fastest-growing market.
One of the primary drivers of the recent rise in immigrant detention is the federal detention bed quota. In 2009, U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, inserted into the Department of Homeland Security’s 2010 budget a mandate that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement fill “not less than 33,400 detention beds” every day. In effect since then, it costs taxpayers $2 billion every year to hold this quota, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
In the summer of 2014, Central American children and families were fleeing violence and persecution in their countries of origin to the U.S. border by the thousands. Our government responded by locking them up, at great cost to their wellbeing, to our nation’s moral principles and to our nation’s pocketbook.
In July of 2014, the Obama administration requested $3.7 billion to respond to the crisis. $879 million would fund the detention and removal of family members traveling with these children. $64 million — 1/500th of that so-called crisis-response funding — was allocated to provide adequate legal representation for these families in their legitimate efforts to seek asylum.
Congress has not granted these emergency funds. However, a new family detention facility opened in December in the South Texas town of Dilley; unsurprisingly, CCA is in charge of operations. By June, this facility will detain 2,400 women and children. Despite their legitimate asylum claims, many will be deported back to life-threatening situations without access to legal representation.
While daily costs for alternatives to detention range from 30 cents up to $14 for community-based programs, beds at the Dilley facility costs around $300 per day. Moreover, detention facilities run by CCA are known for rampant, documented abuse, including lack of access to medical care, insufficient food and abuse by guards.
President Barack Obama closed the CCA-run T. Don Hutto Detention Facility in Taylor for these reasons in August 2009.
Many members of the U.S. House of Representatives with important roles in shaping U.S. immigration policy have accepted significant campaign contributions from CCA and GEO Group.
Direct contributions have included the following:
• $60,000 to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, from CCA and GEO since 2008, combined;
• $18,500 from CCA to Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, who co-sponsored a bill allowing local law enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants;
• Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who sponsored legislation increasing immigrant detention and is the former head of the House Judiciary Committee, has received $6,500 from CCA;
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the House “Gang of 8” that worked on comprehensive immigration reform collected $2,000 from CCA.
Greater transparency and accountability can help shift the balance of power in Washington from campaign contributors to voters. When elected officials listen to the siren call of industries with moneybags in hand, our democracy is undermined. Immigrants pay the ultimate price: their liberty.
Alonzo is still fighting his case to stay in Tucson with his family. Even if he wins, CCA has more to gain: millions in profits from immigrants like him, caught in a system more concerned with profit than public good.