April 2007

This week, the GEO Group, Inc. ("GEO") announced that it has signed a contract with the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee for the development and operation of a 1,500-bed Detention Facility to house U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) prisoners in Laredo, Texas. The new private prison is scheduled to open in 2008. The contract has an initial term of five years with three five-year renewal option periods, for a total contract term of 20 years.

Currently, Texas operates more than 12,000 proposed or recently constructed private prison beds. The majority of these beds are intended to house federal detainees from the USMS or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There are a few exceptions including the Reeves County Detention Center, a facility that received a contract to house incarcerated immigrants from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) under a Criminal Alien Requirements (CAR) contract. Many of these beds are being built or proposed as speculative prison beds, but several thousand are being built on contract from the ICE and USMS.

The expansion of immigrant detention facilities significantly increased in Texas due to changes in federal immigration policy. The number of unauthorized immigrant detainees has exploded from 6,785 in 1994 to over 22,000 in 2006.

Shutdowhutto.org has several excellent videos that explain the problems with T. Don Hutto, Corrections Corporation of America's "prison for the whole family." They're also collecting names on an online petition with five key points on it:

1. That the United States government shut down T. Don Hutto Residential Facility,
2. That the inhabitants of Hutto be given full legal rights and not be deported or imprisoned again,
3. That none of the families at Hutto be separated, and that the reunion of Hutto residents with other family members elsewhere be allowed,
4. That the practice of jailing civilians for immigration charges cease,
5. That the United States government immediately review its practice of contracting imprisonment out to private companies.

Visit the site, sign the petition, and let's get T Don Hutto closed!

A federal judge gave the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency a heads-up this week, ruling that families confined in the T. Don Hutto facility will probably prevail in court on charges that the prison is substandard. One big problem with the current situation: children whose parents are seeking asylum in the United States should not be held in a modified medium-security prison.

It boggles the mind that the government is defending itself for locking up children in this prison. The Flores case, settled in 1997, set clear standards for the treatment of minors in immigration custody. Children awaiting immigration hearings should live with family members, or in a foster home setting if necessary. They should be held in "non-secure" settings (translation: not a place encircled with barbed wire). They should have access to schooling, medical care, and proper nutrition.

T. Don Hutto, operated by Corrections Corporation of America for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has never even come close to the spirit of the law, much less the letter of the law. It originally offered one hour of education a day, and twenty-minute mealtimes for the children, with no other nutrition available. Children wear prison garb, and are held at times in cells where toys are not allowed. Some children have been threatened that they'll be separated from their parents as punishment.

The immigration agency was hoping to promote this new "family-style" prison for an untold number of people, although Hutto at this point holds about 400 people, half of them children. Ten families are involved in the lawsuit over the substandard conditions, represented by the ACLU.

Raymondville Prison

I was fascinated to discover Sprung.com, the website of a company that's proud to display its catalog of ready-made prisons. Sprung is one of the companies assembling these insta-prisons across the country: domes made of fabric stretched over an aluminum frame, that are becoming more widely used as jails, immigrant detention centers and private prisons. For example, the Willacy immigrant detention center in Raymondville, operated by MTC Corporation, (pictured here) was constructed in 90 days, although not necessarily by Sprung.

The Sprung website boasts of their ability to build prisons quickly and "efficiently." Their web gallery of industries they serve includes churches, global military use, retail use, and a corrections gallery. The most telling photo in the corrections gallery is of a group of male prisoners eating at a long dining room table in one of these shiny white domes, with a whole table next to them sitting empty, waiting to be filled. The caption of the photo reads "Businesses can open ahead of schedule or expand production quickly."