Upscale FL community fights large immigrant private prison negotiated secretly.

[madfloridian]

It will be one of the largest immigrant prison in the country. The negotiations were mostly done secretly, and the community is just finding out.

Upscale Fla. Town in Fight over Immigrant Prison


Diana Bramhall

In this photo taken Tuesday, July 26, 2011, Diana Bramhall walks with one of her horses at her home in Southwest Ranches, Fla. Town leaders in this upscale rural enclave have plans to build a 1,500-bed detention center facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A growing group of residents from Southwest Ranches and neighboring cities are seeking to halt the effort. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

SOUTHWEST RANCHES | In one of South Florida's upscale, rural enclaves, where peacocks roam and horse trails are as common as sidewalks, town leaders decided to bring in much of their money from an unusual business: a prison.

Only the leaders of Southwest Ranches kept their plans quiet from residents for almost a decade, and the project has now ballooned into what would be among the federal government's largest immigrant detention centers. The town would have to pay $150,000 each year to keep the prison, but officials say the town would turn a profit by getting 4 percent of what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays the company operating the prison to hold inmates there.

Many residents finally caught wind of the idea this year, when the immigration agency announced a tentative deal, and they're angry. They've held protests at public meetings, contemplated whether to recall the mayor before his March election and whether to amend the town charter to make it easier to fire the city attorney pushing the deal.

The objection over the prison has created an odd set of allies among the town's affluent residents, many of whom are wary of illegal immigrants, and longtime activists who fight for immigrants, legal or not.

ICE and Corrections Corporation of America officials will be meeting with the people in the town to convince them.

ICE, private prison contractor to meet with South Florida immigrant detention center opponents

A report by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service released Thursday states:

"Immigrant detention is the fastest-growing, least scrutinized form of incarceration in the United States. On any given day, the U.S. government incarcerates more than 33,000 immigrants in a vast national network of approximately 250 federal, private, state, and local jails. Among the detained population as a whole, the United States detains asylum seekers, refugees, torture survivors, undocumented immigrants, victims of human trafficking, long-term lawful permanent residents, families, and parents of children who are U.S. citizens."

The Corrections Corporation of America (commonly known as CCA), the largest private immigration detention contractor in the country, is partnering with Southwest Ranches to build the new detention facility, which would house a minimum of 2,000 detainees. According to Detention Watch Network CCA “operates a total of 14 -contracted facilities with a total of 14,556 beds. In 2009, CCA averaged a daily population of 6,199 detained immigrants.”

According to Detention Watch, Boca Raton’s GEO Group is the second largest ICE contractor, with seven facilities and almost 5,000 average daily prisoners as of 2009. GEO manages the Broward Transitional Center located in Deerfield Beach, where at least 700 detainees are held.

Sarah Van Hofwegen, a staff attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice who visits immigrant detainees, tells the Independent, “I see high numbers of women who are victims of domestic violence and end up in the immigration system, through a variety of ways, in the Broward Transitional Center, the lowest-security facility in South Florida.”

This country is now shamelessly allowing private companies to profit from every segment of our society. I never saw this coming. Never expected to see it in my lifetime.

[MADem]

1. Uh-oh...a little bit of NIMBY going on there.

I will say, though, that when community "leaders" do shit like "negotiate in secret" that isn't right either.

Privatized prisons are not all they seem to be cracked up to be. They're fraught with management issues. The community, upscale or not, should have been cut in to the whole negotiations process.

[madfloridian]

3. I have a concern about building large immigrant prisons, private or not.

Why are we in such need of them? Or are we really?

[MADem]

11. Let's be blunt. They're thinking: Too many Haitians, perhaps? nt

[madfloridian]

14. I want to be careful how I say this....

But in FL there is a class war so to speak about immigrants. Our neighbors were Cubans who came over when Castro took over in 59. They set us straight on the stratification. It's real.

[MADem]

15. Absolutely. You shouldn't worry about being careful--there's most assuredly a "pecking order," with

some groups seen as "more important," or "making a greater contribution to the society" or "more deserving of special treatment" than others.

[MedicalAdmin]

6. Very nimby.

These rich asshats vote for this shut every time until they have to look at it or live by it. I fucking hate nimby's.

And don't get me started on private prisons.

[madfloridian]

8. Did you read in the article that Wasserman Schultz and Bill Nelson..

wrote avid letters in support of it. It says lately that WS was encouraging more open dialogue...how nice.

And then read the part about how their DC contacts told them to keep quiet because the feds could more easily help then.

I would not want one of these in my back yard because it would remind of the kind of nation we have become.

[immoderate]

10. Debbie is my rep. And I don't trust her a bit.

--imm

[madfloridian]

12. She supported two extreme GOP politicians, rather than the Democrats.

She would not campaign for Democrats who needed her help so badly because she would hurt her buddies, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

"This time around, Wasserman Schultz and Meek say their relationships with the Republican incumbents, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, leave them little choice but to sit out the three races.

''At the end of the day, we need a member who isn't going to pull any punches, who isn't going to be hesitant,'' Wasserman Schultz said.

The decision comes as Democrats believe they have their best shot in years to defeat at least one of the Cuban-American incumbents with a roster of Democrats that include former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, opposing Lincoln Diaz-Balart; outgoing Miami-Dade Democratic party chair Joe Garcia, opposing Mario Diaz-Balart; and businesswoman Annette Taddeo, opposing Ros-Lehtinen.

But Wasserman Schultz and Meek say their ties to the three Republicans are personal as well as professional: Both served in the state Legislature with Mario Diaz-Balart and say they work in concert with all three on South Florida issues."

[immoderate]

13. I remember it well. Ileana is a moron. And Debbie had power even then.

She had party money to distribute. And she should have helped the opponents to the hyphen brothers.

She's a DLC type.

--imm

[lib2DaBone]

2. A Prediction... TSA will be armed and become the new Federal Police deployed inside America...

The TSA will be at every bus station, train station, airport, Taxi stand and intersection in the country. They will be in your face and up your A _ _. You Will be restricted to travel within the United States and "your papers" Will be required.


With the proliferation of "for profit" private prisons.. the TSA will get a percentage or bounty for every human they deliver to the prison. Sort of like the new red light cameras in use by so many cities across the country..... a "For Profit" revenue heaven.

[Downwinder]

9. They had better hurry,

there is no bus station, train station, or Taxi stand around here any more.

[Starry Messenger]

4. k&r

[madfloridian]

5. A town making 4% of the amount given by immigration to the prison officials.

There is just something wrong with that in my mind. Profiting from imprisoning fellow human beings.

[Downwinder]

7. When they run out of immigrants they can put protesters there.