Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit

[tpsbmam]

But the ballooning of privatized detention has been accompanied by scathing inspection reports, lawsuits and the documentation of widespread abuse and neglect, sometimes lethal. Human rights groups say detention has neither worked as a deterrent nor speeded deportation, as governments contend, and some worry about the creation of a “detention-industrial complex” with a momentum of its own.

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In the United States — with almost 400,000 annual detentions in 2010, up from 280,000 in 2005 — private companies now control nearly half of all detention beds, compared with only 8 percent in state and federal prisons, according to government figures. In Britain, 7 of 11 detention centers and most short-term holding places for immigrants are run by for-profit contractors.

No country has more completely outsourced immigration enforcement, with more troubled results, than Australia. Under unusually severe mandatory detention laws, the system has been run by a succession of three publicly traded companies since 1998. All three are now major players in the international business of locking up and transporting unwanted foreigners.

The first, the Florida-based prison company GEO Group, lost its Australia contract in 2003 amid a commission’s findings that detained children were subjected to cruel treatment. An Australian government audit reported that the contract had not delivered “value-for-money.” In the United States, GEO controls 7,000 of 32,000 detention beds.

Read the rest at the NY Times. What a disgusting world the oligarchs are creating! I truly fear for our aging population and for younger generations just starting out. I'm encouraged to see the young starting to rise up and fight back! It truly will have to be an international fight as the oligarchs have joined forces and are trying to own the world, create their serfdoms & profit from imprisoning those who don't submit.

[Turbineguy]

1. Another trick is the employers call the ICE

just before paycheck time.

[pampango]

2. NPR: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741

Prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.

In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it. Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.