In an astonishing display of hubris, private prison corporation GEO Group has been trying to benefit from a Texas sales tax exemption available only to homeowners. In a decision issued this month, a state appellate court halted GEO’s efforts, concluding that a prison is not a home even to the people locked inside. Geo Group, Inc. v. Hegar, No. 03-15-00726-CV, slip op. (Tex. Ct. App. Aug. 10, 2017). Under Texas law, gas and electricity sold for “residential use” is not subject to the state’s sales tax. GEO claimed that facilities it owns or operates fit this description, thus it should not [...]
Texas Republican Admits He’s Pushing Private Prison Corporation’s Bill
A Republican state representative admits that he is promoting a bill written by the private prison corporation GEO Group. The bill would make it easier for private prison corporations to help the federal government lock up migrant families. “I've known the lady who’s their lobbyist for a long time,” Representative John Raney reportedly told the Associated Press last week. “That’s where the legislation came from.” The second-largest private prison operator in the United States, GEO runs an immigration prison in Karnes City, Texas, about sixty miles south of San Antonio, where it holds entire [...]
In 1 week, private prisons announce new contracts for 3000 immigration detention beds
In another sign that ICE remains committed to business-as-usual in the closing days of the Obama Administration, the agency responsible for maintaining custody of people facing the possibility of forced removal from the United States signed a new contract with private prison giant GEO Group to open a 780-bed facility in Georgia. The second largest private prison corporation operating in the United States, GEO’s safety track-record is horrendous. A recent report by journalist Dorian Merino found that at least three people died inside a single GEO facility over a four-year period. Two years ago, [...]
DHS committee recommends continued use of private prisons
The Department of Homeland Security should continue relying on private prison contractors to maintain its immigration detention practices, a key subcommittee recommends in a draft report. Though the group criticizes the existing oversight of immigration detention centers, it takes a more critical stance toward county jails than privately-owned or operated facilities. In a draft report dated today, the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention Facilities recommends to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson that ICE has little choice but to [...]
If private prisons close…
When the Justice Department announced two weeks ago that it would soon limit its reliance on private prison corporations, the news didn’t take long to reverberate. Advocates rightfully cheered a major step toward ending an egregious moral failure of a policy: Private prisons represent a base commodification of human bondage. For their part, the private prison corporations tried to put on a calm look, but had a tough time succeeding. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the two largest private prison operators in the United States, issued a statement the same day as the Justice [...]
New Efforts to Push Private Prisons Out of Immigration Detention
By Mariela Olivares As regular readers of this blog and of César’s work know, the history of mass incarceration is one mired in political and societal efforts to criminalize drug-related offenses, to lengthen prison sentences and to increase the severity of punishment for relatively minor offenses. These general criminal justice system reform efforts, which gained greatest steam in the 1980’s, resulted in an incredible increase in the number of people incarcerated in the United States. As we also know, the concomitant effect on immigration detention was also unprecedented. Although [...]
Immigration imprisonment continues to be good for the bottom line, but bad for everything else
Immigration imprisonment is no stranger to the push and pull of vested interests. From private prison corporations that build lock-up facilities to food service vendors, the modern immigration imprisonment regime relies heavily on third parties to provide routine functions. As I write in Naturalizing Immigration Imprisonment (forthcoming in the California Law Review), “Having locked itself into the policy choice of using imprisonment to enforce immigration law, the federal government—perhaps inadvertently—created a body of third parties dependent on that policy choice.” Part of what [...]
Naturalizing Immigration Imprisonment
Every day, roughly 33,000 people spend the night imprisoned while waiting to learn whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States. Thousands more are confined on charges of having committed an immigration crime. Others are behind bars because they were already convicted. The substantive law that applies to people in each of these categories differs: civil law governed by the Immigration and Naturalization Act for those in removal proceedings, and criminal law governed by the federal penal code (and, to a smaller degree, its state counterparts). That is largely where the [...]