Search Results for: cca

CCA earns $36 million from family detention

The nation’s largest private prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America, is heavily invested in all manner of detention at the state and federal level. Last year it added to its long running and extensive relationship with the federal government a sizeable contract to detain migrants traveling in family units. In a press release issued last week, CCA reported that this newest feature of its detention business is reaping substantial financial rewards. The company received $36.0 million in revenue from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas during the first quarter [...]

Largest private prison company, CCA, maintains strong immigration business

Following last week’s blogging about the GEO Group’s impressive immigration detention business, I thought I would follow up with an assessment of how its major competitor, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is doing. With 92,000 beds at its disposal, CCA is the largest private prison company operating in the United States, and bills itself as the fifth largest correctional system in the country trailing only the federal government and three states. CCA has a long history of involvement with immigration detention. One of the country’s first two private prisons was an immigration [...]

SCOTUS: Vehicle flight is violent felony under ACCA

It took less than twenty-four hours before my brother Carlos Moctezuma García, one-half (along with my other brother Raúl) of García & García Law and patrocinador of this blog, fielded a question about whether last week’s Supreme Court decision holding that vehicle flight constitutes a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) applies to the crime of violence type of aggravated felony. See Sykes v. United States, No. 09-11311, slip op. (June 9, 2011) (Kennedy wrote for Roberts, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor; Thomas concurring in the judgment; Scalia dissented; Kagan dissented [...]

Mistakes aren’t reviewable, Supreme Court says

Who should suffer when an immigration judge messes up? The migrant, a divided majority of the U.S. Supreme Court announced this week. In Patel v. Garland, the Court concluded that federal courts can’t review factual assessments made by immigration judges even when the immigration judge is wrong. Justice Barrett wrote the majority opinion which Chief Justice Roberts joined along with Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. Justice Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. This case involved Pankajkumar Patel who entered the United States without the [...]

ICE issues enforcement priorities

Last week, ICE issued new enforcement priorities meant to guide its immigration detention and removal activities. In a memo signed by Acting Director Tae D. Johnson, the agency outlines three types of risks—national security, border security, and public safety—that it will prioritize at least temporarily. The memo notes that permanent priorities are expected within 90 days. Until permanent priorities are distributed, the Johnson memo, released on February 18, sets ICE’s enforcement parameters. It does not, however, apply to Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security [...]

Ongoing Litigation over Migrants’ Release Amid COVID-19

By Kim Langona On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency over the COVID-19 outbreak. To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 53,922 deaths and more than 957,000 cases in the United States alone. Immigration officials are already empowered to let people shelter in private residences as public health officials advise. According to section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security has the power [...]

The Great Writ’s Elusive Promise

By Mary Holper In two recent cases, Reid v. Donelan and Brito v. Barr, a federal court in Massachusetts limited ICE’s power to detain people. But by requiring detained immigrants to file habeas corpus petitions to get a bond hearing in immigration court, Chief Judge Saris of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts undercut the strength of her own clear-sighted analysis. Reid and Brito are both class actions challenging immigration detention. For Reid class members, they must file a habeas corpus petition arguing that their detention under a 1996 mandatory detention statute, [...]

Border realities

In the pitched battles over immigration, rhetorical binaries dominate. Republicans refer to migrants as aliens. Democrats trumpet innocent children traumatized by extremist Trump-era practices. Migrants are either good or they’re bad, and in the imaginations of politicians and pundits, it’s possible to put some people into one category and other people into the other. Where talking points end, laws and policies begin. Under the illusion that people can easily be boxed, immigration law assigns privileges and sets law enforcement priorities based on markers of undesirability. Born in [...]