August 2015

On August 18, Cleveland, TX Mayor Niki Coats announced at a city council meeting that a private prison operator had withdrawn plans to build a new immigrant detention facility. 

Cleveland Mayor Niki Coats

The news drew cheers from more than two dozen residents who showed up to protest. 

One week earlier, private prison contractor, Emerald Companies, had asked the city for a letter of intent. Coats refused to sign, saying, "It's not the kind of growth in the community we need."

Coats later explained that Emerald withdrew the plan claiming they had another location in mind. 

When the Cleveland Advocate asked other Texas county judges about the impact on counties of building immigrant detention facilities, Polk County Judge Sidney Murphy had this to say:

"According to Murphy, in Polk County, the IAH Detention Facility operated by MTC of Utah and built a little more than 10 years ago is required to pay the county a per diem fee per inmate. However, the population of the 1,000-bed facility is so low, with only 300 beds being used, it is no longer generating any income for the county.

“'Why build a 1,000-bed facility when there is one less than 30 miles down the road that has only 300 beds being used?' Murphy asked."

Burnet County Judge James Oakley said after his county entered a 20-year revenue bond deal with a private prison company, the deal eventually went belly up, leaving the county with lost revenue and a facility that was much bigger than necessary. 

It seems the Cleveland mayor and residents may have helped save Liberty County from similar fates.

CARA volunteers wheel legal materials into Dilley family detention camp

"Attorney Kim Hunter received a letter earlier this month from immigration authorities telling her she'd been banned from a family detention center in South Texas for being "belligerent" in demanding the release of her clients one late July night.

Andrew Free learned Aug. 3 that he'd also been banished from the country's largest such facility after the attorney marched into a courtroom trailer 10 days before to ask why U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were meeting with his clients without his knowledge.

ICE says the two violated visitation standards, but a coalition of immigration attorneys says the bans are unprecedented and is fighting to rescind them as part of its ongoing effort to improve access to the immigrant mothers and their children who are in the U.S. without legal permission and being held at the facility."

Transparency has been an issue at the facility and the other family detention center in Karnes County from the outset with legal support groups and advocates arguing that ICE and private prison corporations, CCA and GEO Group, have inappropriately denied access to academics, lawyers, paralegals, and human rights groups.  In fact, Robbins addresses this pattern in his piece:

"[T]he lawyers say immigration authorities are increasingly hindering their ability to represent clients. They gave examples such as citing security concerns as a way to deny access to counsel, limiting access to courtrooms, keeping out psychologists who've received clearance and sudden rule changes, such as not allowing cellphones to be left in lockers, meaning the lawyers must keep the phones locked away in hot cars."

While ICE seems set on keeping scrutiny of its facilities to a minimum, a judge's order may end the practice all together.  On Friday, Judge Dolly Gee reiterated her decision from July that the government had violated a settlement agreement from the 1990s governing the detention of migrant children.  According to McClatchy:

"A federal judge ruled late Friday night that the Obama administration has just over two months to begin releasing hundreds of migrant mothers and children who have been locked up in government family detention centers as they await their asylum hearings.

In a 15-page ruling that quoted Mahatma Gandhi, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Central California delivered a scolding rebuke of the government's expanded use of family detention centers. But she also granted the government one of its key requests for additional time – as much as 20 days - to continue to hold mothers and children under certain circumstances like last year's surge of nearly 70,000 Central American families into the United States. 　

“This is a historic decision,” said Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School. “If it stands, it will force major changes to the government’s family detention program.”

While this policy may be good for asylum-seeking families, it's bound to negatively impact CCA and GEO's bottom-lines. We will keep you posted with further developments on family detention.