If you’re looking for one of the reasons why the United States imprisons more people — by miles — than any other nation, you can look to the development of private prisons as a means of making some people rich. Those people spend millions of dollars to lobby elected officials to do two things: Convert government-run prisons to private prisons, and lock up more people for longer periods of time. Because that makes them even richer.
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May 16, 2012
Private Prisons Lobby for Harsher Sentences
April 4, 2012
ICE Arrest 3k Immigrants in 6 Days, Largest Roundup Ever
By Jorge Rivas, of Colorlines. Tuesday, April 3 2012
On Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced 3,168 undocumented immigrants were detained over the course of six-days in a national operation the agency dubbed “Cross Check.” According to ICE, the six-day operation was the largest such effort in the agency’s history.
Operation Cross Check involved more than 1,900 ICE officers who worked with federal, state and local law enforcement throughout the U.S. to carry out the arrests in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
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February 14, 2012
Deported Dad Begs North Carolina To Give Him Back His Children
By Seth Freed Wessler, of ColorLines:
Every morning since the first of his three boys was born in 2007, Felipe Montes would wake early and prepare breakfast for his wife and children, get his boys ready for their day, change them, feed them and when he could not arrange a ride with another family member, drive them to daycare. Then he’d go to work at a landscaping company for the next 9 hours and return home in time to cook his children dinner. “I love my kids to death,” Montes said recently. “When they were born, it’s something so wonderful you can’t explain.” Now, Montes may never see them again.
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January 28, 2012
No Conviction, No Freedom: Immigration Authorities Locked 13,000 In Limbo
An immigrant stands in a holding cell at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility for illegal immigrants on July 30, 2010 in Florence, Arizona.
Article by Elise Foley, from the HuffingtonPost:
WASHINGTON — On a single day this past fall, the United States government held 13,185 people in immigration detention who had not been convicted of a crime, some of whom will not be charged with one, according to information The Huffington Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead, at a cost of roughly 2 million taxpayer dollars per day, the men and women were detained while immigration authorities sorted out their fates.
This case stands in stark contrast to the stated goal of immigration policy under the administration of President Barack Obama: to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants who’ve been convicted of crimes.
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January 9, 2012
Quadriplegic Undocumented Immigrant Dies In Mexico After Being Deported From His Hospital Bed
By Marie Diamond of ThinkProgress:
In August 2010, Quelino Ojeda Jimenez, an undocumented construction worker in Chicago, fell 20 feet off a building while on the job and was paralyzed from the neck down. Unable to pay his own medical expenses, he was deported back to Mexico on December 22, 2010.
But he never made it home. Instead, he was left to languish at a small Mexican hospital that was unequipped to handle his needs. UPI reports that Ojeda died on New Year’s Day:
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November 8, 2010
Private Prison Industry Behind Arizona’s New Immigration Law
Reposted from Tiresias Speaks.
Arizona seized the international spotlight last April when Governor Jan Brewer signed immigration Bill 1070 into law. The new law requires police officers to arrest any person they stop who cannot immediately prove that they entered the country legally.
Immigrant communities, their sympathizers, and civil liberties advocates have violently condemned the bill as a blatant endorsement of racial profiling that does nothing to address the root causes of illegal immigration.
Anti-immigration advocates, meanwhile, have lauded the bill as being a positive step towards halting the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States and securing the nation’s border.
The full implementation of the law has been temporarily halted by court order as U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton waits to hear further arguments regarding the bill. In all of the considerable controversy surrounding this bill, however, one question seems to have fallen by the wayside: just whose idea was this bill anyways?
Like anything else in politics, all you have to do is follow the money. Ever since Governor Brewer signed the bill into law much of the country has been left holding their breath as they wait to see what will come of it- but perhaps no one is more blue in the face than those who stand to make additional millions from the law.
As it turns out, the bill was written in December of 2010 by representatives of the private prison industry at a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Washington, DC.
ALEC is composed of several representatives of powerful business interests including ExxonMobil, tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., the NRA, and most importantly in this case, the Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the United States.
The private prison industry has been successfully trying to keep people locked up for profit for years. The industry has done everything from lobbying for stricter drug laws too arguing for the expanded privatization of state and federal penitentiaries. In fact, thanks in large part to their success, the United States now boasts the highest rate of incarceration in the world.
The Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies have long known that locking up illegal immigrants is one of the most promising sectors for continued growth in the private prison industry. The implementation of the new Arizona law will likely send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison- generating hundred of millions of dollars worth of additional profits for the private prison industry- and possibly pave the way for other states to pass similar measures.
Arizona State Senator and ALEC member Russell Pearce maintains that the bill was his own idea, but we now know that the bill was written almost word for word with the help of the Corrections Corporation of America in Washington, DC’s Grand Hyatt Hotel. In the privacy of a hotel conference room, members of ALEC designed the bill, debated the language, and finally voted unanimously to approve the model piece of legislation.
Of the unusual 36 State senators who rushed to co-sponsor the bill back in Arizona, at least 2/3 of them are reported to have attended the ALEC meeting in December, and thirty of them received donations over the following six months from prison lobbyists or prison companies.
Once the bill got onto governor Jan Brewer’s desk it was a sure thing- she is a strong supporter of private prisons and both her spokesman Paul Senseman and her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin are former lobbyists for private prison companies.
It is important to realize that none of this is illegal or even especially unusual. Legislation is regularly drafted with the help of organizations like ALEC and then passed into law by representatives who are receiving money from the same business interests who wrote the bill.
It is well-known that keeping black and brown people in chains has been big business in the United States for hundreds of years. It appears that Arizona’s new immigration law is simply the latest niche for the exorbitantly wealthy few who benefit the most from keeping minorities in cages.
May 27, 2010
Obama to send 1,200 Soldiers to Mexican Border
A death sentence for immigrants.
President Barack Obama announced the deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border on Tuesday, to aid local law enforcement in stemming the tide of drug traffickers and illegal immigration. The announcement came shortly after he left a lunch meeting with the Senate Republican Caucus.
The President will also be requesting an additional $500 million in federal spending for law enforcement involved in patrolling the nearly 2,000 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico.
But the Republican Senators from Arizona say more troops and funding are needed: both John McCain and Jon Kyl had originally requested 9,000 troops. They would also like the troops to play a more active role in enforcement.
The troops’ orders and destination are still unclear, as is the timeline of their deployment, although administration officials have said that the troops will help with a variety of issues on the border.
Among their goals will be to aid in intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance, and possibly enforcement, although the Department of Defense is hesitant to support such a use of U.S. troops.
Pentagon officials in the past have worried that such a use of the National Guard may be misconstrued as a militarization of the border, although some may argue that an increased police presence could likewise be militarization of sorts.
According to a letter from security officials James L. Jones and John O. Brennan on Tuesday, the troops being deployed will be used to support border patrol agents until Customs and Border Protection can recruit and train enough officers to relieve the National Guard.
Some U.S. troops being deployed will, nonetheless, be armed.
The Mexican Government responded Tuesday, saying they hoped troops would be used only to combat drug cartels, and not to enforce immigration laws. Officials worried that using military units in such a way may lead to further abuses of civilians.
The concerns are justified.
Since the initiation of Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. border patrol operation launched by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994, between 3,861 and 5,607 people have died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border.
The ACLU has condemned the high mortality rates as an “international humanitarian crisis.”
Since its inception, Operation Gatekeeper and other plans like it have focussed on deterring immigrants from crossing into highly populated areas by stepping up visible enforcement along their borders. This in turn would force immigrants towards less hospitable, and more dangerous, areas.
The Senators from Arizona more or less agree on this strategy. Republican Jon Kyl criticized Obama’s deployment, arguing that “[the troops] were not intended to be deployed to the border.”
“Rather they’ll be investigating, administrative support, maybe training… Now that’s all fine…but the real value of the National Guard is to be seen.”
The strategy, however cruel, works… at least partially.
In 1994, San Diego was the largest point of entry for undocumented workers – border patrol agents were making 450,000 apprehensions there annually. But within five years of Operation Gatekeeper, that number had dropped to 150,000.
Of course, this didn’t mean the number of immigrants entering the country had declined. It only meant that the number of immigrants entering through San Diego had declined. In fact, migrants had simply been pushed towards another state: Arizona.
In 1994, when greater enforcement began in San Diego, apprehensions in the Tuscon and Yuma sectors of Arizona were around 160,000 annually. But within 6 years of the increased enforcement in California, apprehensions in Arizona skyrocketed to over 700,000.
In fact, one could say that the impetus for such a crackdown on immigrants in Arizona today was actually a similar crackdown in California years ago.
Immigration enforcement in this country has only been able to shift immigration, never slow it significantly. In fact, as we discussed in a previous article, the only thing which has definitively slowed immigration has been the recession.
In an article published in La Cronica de Hoy, a Mexican newspaper, locals were “more than worried” about the increased presence of troops at the border, especially at a time when more than 14 U.S. states are contemplating laws similar to those in Arizona.
Jorge Chabat, who study’s drug trafficking and migration as a Professor of International Studies in Mexico city, points out that:
“[The] U.S. government has spent over a decade taking similar measures, placing the National Guard at the border and building a wall, but there is no significant impact on the flow of drugs or undocumented workers.”
May 4, 2010
Arizona’s Immigration Law and Mayday
On April 23rd, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 into law, giving local and state police broad power to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act would require immigrants in the state of Arizona to carry their alien registration documents on their persons at all times. It also requires police to question any person they may reasonably suspect is in the U.S. illegally.
The Act comes after years of increased public outcry for better enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
In response, grassroots organizations all over the country, from faith-based groups to labor unions, poured into the streets on May 1st to demand a repeal of the Arizona reforms.
May 1st, also known as International Workers’ Day, has traditionally marked the anniversary of the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, 1886. But recently, the holiday has served as rallying point for labor activists and immigrant rights advocates to gather around.
Backlash – Mayday, 2010:
In all, over 90 cities saw tens of thousands of protestors march, and a large number of high-profile politicians and celebrities speak out against the Arizona law.
In this video, you can see U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) being arrested for participating in an act of civil disobedience at the white house.
In another high-profile disagreement with Arizona, the Major League Baseball Players Association released a statement condemning SB1070.
In Chicago, between eight and fifteen thousand people gathered in support of immigrant rights only days after activists attempted to physically block deportation vans in their city. In Dallas, around 20,000 rallied.
Los Angelas saw by far the largest protests, massing about 50,000 marchers at its height, focusing predominantly on the Arizona reforms. Five coalitions, representing over 150 labor, faith, and immigrant rights organizations banded together to put out the call for the protests. Protestors in the march chanted “boycott Arizona,” and wore t-shirts asking “do I look illegal?”
Leon Franco, a Sylmar construction worker who attended the march told reporters, “in Mexico, there’s no way to get ahead. Back home, I had a very poor life. If it wasn’t for this country, I don’t know where I’d be.”
Franco’s wife, an illegal immigrant, was arrested a year ago and deported to Mexico. Since then, he has had to be both “mother and father” to his stepson, Daniel, 14, and son, Johnny, 12.
“My kids would like to have their mother here with them,” Mr. Franco said. “I’m here because we don’t want to happen to other kids what has happened to these two,” pointing to his sons.
It’s a common story amongst immigrants, many of whom have friends or relatives which are in the country illegally.
In fact, the number of immigrants detained and deported from the U.S. has been on the rise in recent years. In 2009 alone, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) deported over 380,000 individuals, and have set a controversial new quota to get numbers up in 2010.
Increased Regulation:
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, state laws relating to immigration have increased substantially in recent years.
In 2005, a mere 300 bills were introduced in states across the U.S., and nearly 40 laws were enacted. In 2006, those numbers were 570 and 84.
In 2007, the number of bills introduced more than doubled to 1,562, and the number of laws to 240. Over 1,000 bills have already been brought up this year.
Of the bills which have been proposed in states across the nation, the majority of them have had to deal with either identification, law enforcement or employment. Others have dealt with immigrants’ health care, education and voting rights.
The increase in bills regulating immigrant activity should come as no surprise. The immigration debate over the last decade has been fierce, involving protests, pickets, street battles and racially motivated murders.
The trend has continued, especially in border states such as Arizona, with wide-ranging support from residents. Nation wide, three-fourths of Americans say they’ve heard about the law in Arizona, and over 50% of them support it. A Zogby Interactive poll found that 79 percent of Americans do not agree that illegal aliens are entitled to the same rights and basic freedoms as US citizens.
And so, with such wide-ranging support, Arizona was able to lead a conservative charge against immigrants. Not only have they made it illegal for immigrants to travel across their state without the proper paperwork, but they have also moved to fire every english teacher with a heavy accent.
The state has also pulled federal funding from any school that offers programs which “promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
Texas is expected to pick up similar laws in their next legislative session.
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