Cristina Jimenez

Immigrant Detention: The Cost & Profits of a Failed Practice

After September 11, the Bush Administration established the National Fugitive Operation Program under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The program aims at increasing national security by detaining and deporting immigrants with criminal records. In the name of fighting terror, as of 2008, ICE arrested more than 72,000 undocumented immigrants. But contrary to the program’s goal, 73 percent of those arrested had no criminal records. As a result, immigrants have become the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population. Workplace and home raids separate thousands of families. And undocumented immigrant workers are treated as dangerous criminals.

Thanks to the criminalization of immigrants, Corrections Corporations of America(CCA), the nation’s largest owner and operator of privatized correctional and detention centers had a $33.6 million increase in the third quarter of last year and its earnings grew by 15 percent during the same period. Terrorizing and detaining immigrant workers and families has become a very profitable business—benefiting the prison industry and hurting immigrant communities.

As part of CCA’s expansion, an immigration detention center will be opened in Hall County Georgia this summer. CCA officials anticipate that the new detention center will house 500 immigrant detainees by the end of the year. The new detention center will create 162 jobs—but at the cost of detaining immigrant workers and families who pose no threat to our country.

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Posted at 2:00 PM, Mar 17, 2009 in Immigration
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