SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
'Profiting From Misery': Private Prison Corporations Driving Harsh Immigration Policies
Companies spent millions in lobbying on immigration issues that led to a spike in incarceration levels and, in turn, boosted corporate profits
Apr 16, 2015
Private prison companies are spending millions of dollars to lobby the U.S. government for harsher immigration laws that, in turn, spike corporate profits by driving up incarceration levels, a new report from the national social justice organization Grassroots Leadership reveals.
Entitled Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota, the report's release on Wednesday coincided with a renewed hunger strike at a privately-run immigrant detention center in southern Texas, where asylum-seeking mothers incarcerated with their children report inhumane conditions, including sexual assaults by prison guards and staff.
According to the report, for-profit companies are capturing an ever-increasing share of this immigrant detention center "market." In 2009, 49 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds were run by for-profit companies. Today, that number stands at 62 percent.
Now 90 percent of the largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are privately operated, the study finds.
Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, both notorious for human rights violations, dominate this rapidly growing industry, operating 72 percent of privately-operated ICE beds. This has brought the companies a windfall in profits: together they made nearly almost $478 million from ICE detentions in 2014 alone.
According to the report, it is no coincidence that these companies are benefiting from federal policies: both have aggressively lobbied the U.S. government over issues that "affect their bottom line." For example, between 2008 and 2014, the private prison corporation CCA shelled out $10,560,000 during periods when "they lobbied on issues related to immigrant detention and immigration reform," the researchers state. Furthermore, GEO spent nearly half a million dollars between 2011 and 2014--a time when they lobbied directly on issues of immigration.
A bulk of this lobbying has taken aim at the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee--which created controversial "bed quota." Established in 2009, this policy has been interpreted as a mandate to contract and fill more than 33,000 beds every single day.
"Since its implementation, the quota has become a driver of an increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement strategy," notes the report. "The immigrant detention system has expanded significantly since the implementation of the quota, and the percent of the detained population held in private facilities has increased even more dramatically."
Report coauthor Bethany Carson declared in a press statement, "The immigrant detention quota is taxpayer-financed insurance for private prison corporations that the government will maintain their bottom line at all costs. Now, we are seeing those same corporations invest millions in the Congressional committee that created that insurance policy for them."
Carson added, "Congress's vast immigrant detention system is tearing apart families and communities, and creating an enormous profit from human misery."
These policies have a harrowing human toll.
Marichuy Leal, who was born in Mexico and raised in the United States, was detained for nine months in CCA-run Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. In the report, she described being sexually harassed, intimidated, and discriminated against while in CCA custody because of her identity as a transgender woman. This included being placed in solitary confinement.
"Trans women and the LGBT community aren't safe in detention centers," Leal told researchers. "I wasn't safe. We're asking for help...but ICE and CCA...just punish us."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Sarah Lazare
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She is a former Staff Writer at Common Dreams. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including The Intercept, The Nation, and Tom Dispatch.
Private prison companies are spending millions of dollars to lobby the U.S. government for harsher immigration laws that, in turn, spike corporate profits by driving up incarceration levels, a new report from the national social justice organization Grassroots Leadership reveals.
Entitled Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota, the report's release on Wednesday coincided with a renewed hunger strike at a privately-run immigrant detention center in southern Texas, where asylum-seeking mothers incarcerated with their children report inhumane conditions, including sexual assaults by prison guards and staff.
According to the report, for-profit companies are capturing an ever-increasing share of this immigrant detention center "market." In 2009, 49 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds were run by for-profit companies. Today, that number stands at 62 percent.
Now 90 percent of the largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are privately operated, the study finds.
Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, both notorious for human rights violations, dominate this rapidly growing industry, operating 72 percent of privately-operated ICE beds. This has brought the companies a windfall in profits: together they made nearly almost $478 million from ICE detentions in 2014 alone.
According to the report, it is no coincidence that these companies are benefiting from federal policies: both have aggressively lobbied the U.S. government over issues that "affect their bottom line." For example, between 2008 and 2014, the private prison corporation CCA shelled out $10,560,000 during periods when "they lobbied on issues related to immigrant detention and immigration reform," the researchers state. Furthermore, GEO spent nearly half a million dollars between 2011 and 2014--a time when they lobbied directly on issues of immigration.
A bulk of this lobbying has taken aim at the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee--which created controversial "bed quota." Established in 2009, this policy has been interpreted as a mandate to contract and fill more than 33,000 beds every single day.
"Since its implementation, the quota has become a driver of an increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement strategy," notes the report. "The immigrant detention system has expanded significantly since the implementation of the quota, and the percent of the detained population held in private facilities has increased even more dramatically."
Report coauthor Bethany Carson declared in a press statement, "The immigrant detention quota is taxpayer-financed insurance for private prison corporations that the government will maintain their bottom line at all costs. Now, we are seeing those same corporations invest millions in the Congressional committee that created that insurance policy for them."
Carson added, "Congress's vast immigrant detention system is tearing apart families and communities, and creating an enormous profit from human misery."
These policies have a harrowing human toll.
Marichuy Leal, who was born in Mexico and raised in the United States, was detained for nine months in CCA-run Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. In the report, she described being sexually harassed, intimidated, and discriminated against while in CCA custody because of her identity as a transgender woman. This included being placed in solitary confinement.
"Trans women and the LGBT community aren't safe in detention centers," Leal told researchers. "I wasn't safe. We're asking for help...but ICE and CCA...just punish us."
Sarah Lazare
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She is a former Staff Writer at Common Dreams. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including The Intercept, The Nation, and Tom Dispatch.
Private prison companies are spending millions of dollars to lobby the U.S. government for harsher immigration laws that, in turn, spike corporate profits by driving up incarceration levels, a new report from the national social justice organization Grassroots Leadership reveals.
Entitled Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota, the report's release on Wednesday coincided with a renewed hunger strike at a privately-run immigrant detention center in southern Texas, where asylum-seeking mothers incarcerated with their children report inhumane conditions, including sexual assaults by prison guards and staff.
According to the report, for-profit companies are capturing an ever-increasing share of this immigrant detention center "market." In 2009, 49 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds were run by for-profit companies. Today, that number stands at 62 percent.
Now 90 percent of the largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are privately operated, the study finds.
Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, both notorious for human rights violations, dominate this rapidly growing industry, operating 72 percent of privately-operated ICE beds. This has brought the companies a windfall in profits: together they made nearly almost $478 million from ICE detentions in 2014 alone.
According to the report, it is no coincidence that these companies are benefiting from federal policies: both have aggressively lobbied the U.S. government over issues that "affect their bottom line." For example, between 2008 and 2014, the private prison corporation CCA shelled out $10,560,000 during periods when "they lobbied on issues related to immigrant detention and immigration reform," the researchers state. Furthermore, GEO spent nearly half a million dollars between 2011 and 2014--a time when they lobbied directly on issues of immigration.
A bulk of this lobbying has taken aim at the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee--which created controversial "bed quota." Established in 2009, this policy has been interpreted as a mandate to contract and fill more than 33,000 beds every single day.
"Since its implementation, the quota has become a driver of an increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement strategy," notes the report. "The immigrant detention system has expanded significantly since the implementation of the quota, and the percent of the detained population held in private facilities has increased even more dramatically."
Report coauthor Bethany Carson declared in a press statement, "The immigrant detention quota is taxpayer-financed insurance for private prison corporations that the government will maintain their bottom line at all costs. Now, we are seeing those same corporations invest millions in the Congressional committee that created that insurance policy for them."
Carson added, "Congress's vast immigrant detention system is tearing apart families and communities, and creating an enormous profit from human misery."
These policies have a harrowing human toll.
Marichuy Leal, who was born in Mexico and raised in the United States, was detained for nine months in CCA-run Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. In the report, she described being sexually harassed, intimidated, and discriminated against while in CCA custody because of her identity as a transgender woman. This included being placed in solitary confinement.
"Trans women and the LGBT community aren't safe in detention centers," Leal told researchers. "I wasn't safe. We're asking for help...but ICE and CCA...just punish us."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.