People are beginning to question the private prison industry especially as it becomes more obvious that they need to be full to make money, and that taxpayers end up paying the contractual fine when the prison population falls below the required quota agreed to by the state. To keep the numbers up, people are being arrested for minor crimes for which they really don’t need to be imprisoned, and states have taken way a judge’s discretion when it comes to sentencing so that the mandatory sentences help keep the prisons filled.
If people’s objections continue to rise, there will need to be an alternate source of inmates as a way to make the money if the cash cow is killed.
And it has been found.
When families report to the authorities at the Southern border, the same way the boat loads of people from Europe did at Ellis Island, they are declared illegal when following the law, and children are separated from their parents.
In Jenny Lisette Flores et al. vs Janet Reno, known as the Flores Settlement, how long the government can hold migrant children, and under what conditions was established, but the Trump administration wants to lift those court-imposed limits.
Trump believes that for as long as migrant families are kept together for as long as their immigration cases are pending that will satisfy Flores because the children will be treated with “dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability as minors.”
Ignoring that a person cannot be deemed to be here illegally if they are following procedure upon arrival and before their case is assessed, Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen has said,
“Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the Department’s ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country.”
That means a place to keep them and the money to support running those places.
And the private prison industry is chomping at the bit to increase their role in that, and this means an end run around the court decision.
Now, this may appear to be speculation, but there is a practice already in place that shows that the retention of undocumented people means income, so the more that are detained the better even if that detention is questionable.
Trump and his bots hate the concept of sanctuary cities, portraying them as communities with immigrants running amok committing crimes while being protected by a community’s sanctuary status. In reality, being a sanctuary city means that local law enforcement will continue to address the needs of the community and if in the process someone they detain for a specific and serious crime is found to be in the country under possible illegal circumstances they will be passed on to ICE, but they will not conduct raids, perform actions to seek out the undocumented, or check people’s papers if they jay walk or have a rear light on their car not functioning. It also means that after going to court for minor things like a traffic ticket, or being acquitted after a trial, they are free to go and are not handed over for retention while their immigrant status is examined.
But if there is money to be made by collecting the undocumented, it is not the “illegals” running amok, but those who collect them.
I live in a city that first relied on immigrants during the days of whaling to become the richest city per capita in the United States, was the birthplace of abolition by accepting without question refugees from the Southern slave states, and then capitalized on the wave of immigrants from Europe in the days when manufacturing replaced whaling.
But we have a county sheriff who loves spreading falsehoods about immigrants in a county built by immigrants, and craves the attention he gets from Trump and other anti-immigrant people and groups, and, although his job in Massachusetts is to run his jail, not patrol neighborhoods to keep the community safe, like he likes to claim he is doing, he is more of a media-whore than an active sheriff.
To keep the community safe, it would be better if he stopped going around the country promoting his lies, and it would go a long way if he stopped creating an adversarial relationship between the community and local law enforcement by misrepresenting them and pretending to be them.
But there is money to be made.
The standard procedure when someone is arrested for some minor infraction is that if the charge is dropped against an undocumented immigrant, ICE can place a detainer on them and they are transferred out of jail and to an ICE facility. But the person is set free if the detainer isn’t honored or ICE agents don’t arrive in time to detain the person.
To be able to detain someone and violate the time limit, Ice has made contracts with county sheriffs that allow the jail to hold undocumented immigrants for ICE for money.
The highest paid county at $98 per inmate per day for a total of $6.2 million last year for holding an average of 175 immigrants is Bristol County, Massachusetts.
Considering the poor food, lack of decent conditions, advertised rehabilitation programs that are dormant, poor health services, and the highest suicide rate in the state, there is a profit to be made when basic needs are pared down to close to abusive.
The more detainees the sheriff can muster, the higher his profits which explains his need to demonize immigrants and oppose sanctuary cities, while hoping to find excuses for conducting raids.
There has to be funds to pay for his multiple trips to Washington and the hotels at which he stays. His travel schedule shows he spends a lot of time away from his jail in order to attend conferences, make television appearances, and speak against immigrants at white supremacist gatherings. His travel schedule and budget do not say where the money to pay for this comes from, and the ultimate irony would be if the money to pay for his self promotion as he speaks against immigrants, comes from the ICE money he makes from scooping them up.
It might just be speculation, but nothing in his budgets can prove this not to be true as they are long on money spent but short on saying what it is spent on.
With more states legalizing marijuana, that method of filling the for profit prisons is being lost.
Finding ways to fill them with immigrants fills that void