It has all the trappings of a late night, futuristic action movie: A prison facility tucked away somewhere in Mexico, thousands of inmates, and of course, the prison’s private operators, which run the place in a legal and international netherworld. For Arizona officials, however, that scenario is more than just a bad cable TV movie. If some members of the state legislature have their way, it could all become quite real.
Facing severe and costly prison overcrowding and a growing population of undocumented immigrant prisoners, state lawmakers are considering controversial legislation which would set the stage for a prison located in Mexico, built and operated by a private corrections company, to house Mexican nationals arrested in Arizona.
Specifically, the bill calls for the establishment of a “foreign private prison commission” to hire a contractor and oversee the building and administration of a private prison, which would be under the purview of the state despite its location across the border. The bill also stipulates that the entire process would not begin until the existing U.S. prison-transfer treaty with Mexico is changed; the bill sets a deadline of 2010 for the legal path to be cleared.
Supporters of the measure say it would save Arizona taxpayers up to $100 million a year — money which pays for the approximately 4,000 Mexican nationals currently in Arizona prisons — because it’s cheaper to build and operate a prison in Mexico than in the U.S. “We’re getting stuck with a high volume of illegal felons and having to pay for it,” says Republican State Rep. Russell Jones, the bill’s sponsor. “If the federal government is not going to reimburse us, then they should at least put us in a position where we can mitigate some of the costs to Arizona taxpayers.”
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