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 [...]
Private prison company GEO reports strong immigration business
The nation’s second largest private prison company, the GEO Group, reported strong immigration detention portfolios in its latest filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. GEO made headlines in the spring for buying the naming rights to a football stadium at Florida Atlantic University; after sustained pressure, the university turned down GEO's offer. The GEO Group operates “approximately 72,000 beds at 95 correctional and detention facilities, including projects under development, and also included the provision of monitoring of more than 70,000 offenders in a community-based [...]
Report reveals key info about immigration prisons
A report by Human Rights First discloses a wealth of hard-to-find information about the nation’s burgeoning immigration detention system. Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System—A Two-Year Review (2011) goes a long way to shattering the legal claim that immigration detention is a form of civil confinement. Though this report was published two years ago, I only recently came across it and found it very informative. Over and over, the report exposes immigration detention centers as using the same procedures as criminal jails. Detainees usually wear uniforms that [...]
Critical report on criminalization of migrants
Last week Human Rights Watch released a damning report on the federal government’s sustained effort to use criminal law and procedure to sanction immigration law violations. The report, Turning Migrants into Criminals: The Harmful Impact of U.S. Border Prosecutions (May 2013), documents the many ways in which the criminal justice system has been employed to punish conduct that previously was largely dealt with through the civil immigration system or that didn’t often register on the government’s radar. Though the 83-page report has much to offer, there were a few aspects worth [...]
ICE Risk Assessments: From Mass Detention to Mass Supervision?
Mark Noferi and Robert Koulish [Ed. Note: Today, Mark Noferi is joined by Professor Robert Koulish, a political scientist in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland who also teaches immigration law at Maryland’s Carey School of Law. Professor Koulish’s most recent book is “Immigration and American Democracy: Subverting the Rule of Law,” in which he examined immigration control as a laboratory for post-9/11 expansion of U.S. executive power, and he is co-editing “Immigration Detention, Risk and Human Rights—Studies on Immigration and Crime” (2014 release). His [...]
Report: Private prison growth on civil & crim side of immigration prosecutions
Private prisons have expanded at an astonishing rate in recent years and much of that growth can be attributed to immigration imprisonment, according to a new report by the Sentencing Project. Cody Mason, The Sentencing Project, Dollars and Detainees: The Growth of For-Profit Detention (July 2012). Thanks in large part to immigration prisoners, private prison corporations have maintained strong bottom-lines even while the economy has struggled, the report added. The report divides immigration prisoners into two camps: those held under the direction of ICE and those under the United States [...]
Time to Rethink Immigration Detention
Last month’s release of immigrants from immigration detention centers brought praise from immigrants' rights advocates and impassioned criticism from conservative politicians. House Speaker John Boehner decried the decision to “let criminals go free” and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte added, "By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the administration is needlessly endangering American lives." It was no surprise that the White House quickly distanced itself from last month's events. The Obama Administration has expanded the immigration detention population [...]
Scholar’s Sidebar: Immigration prisons need careful eye
Last week the Department of Homeland Security announced that it is releasing an unknown number of detainees (probably in the several hundreds) from immigration detention centers. This may be just another shot in the sequestration battle, but for immigration law observers it’s a surprising move by an administration that has shown great interest in detention. The agency has consistently explained that it will detain as many people as Congress pays for and its track record indicates it’s kept true to its word. Under President Obama, DHS has expanded its immigration detention capacity to record [...]
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