The ongoing strife in the Middle East has displaced scores of people seeking religious freedom and basic rights during the last several years.
The issue reached a head recently when millions of Syrian refugees, seeking safety and opportunity in other countries, began fleeing their homeland.
Some act lawfully, and some attempt to enter countries illegally, seeing no better alternative.
The issue of a stricter versus a more lenient immigration policy earned a lot of headlines last year.
Opponents of a stricter policy use a humanitarian rationale to support opening our borders to refugees.
Proponents pointed to the heightened security threats refugees pose.
The Corrections Corporation of America welcomes refugees with open arms — and open pockets.
The CCA and GEO, the two largest privately-owned correction firms in the United States, have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying despite constant assurances to do otherwise. Many of these funds have gone towards influencing politicians to strengthen immigration laws, sending refugees their way and fattening their own coffers in the process.
One would think a strong private prison industry would encourage higher incarceration rates, especially given the strength of the lobby, which spent $1 million in 2015, and that is exactly the case.
Preying on refugees and victims of war crimes is beyond petty and is yet another reason our prison industry is in need of a complete overhaul.
It is worth pointing out one of the beneficiaries of the private prison lobby was none other than former presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio.
During his time as a Florida congressman, the Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate PAC received $40,000 in contributions. Rubio’s office helped push through a $110 million contract for GEO Group, CCA’s largest competitor.
It’s a well-known fact the U.S. incarcerates people at a much higher rate than other countries. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. houses 20 percent of the world’s prisoners despite being home to only 5 percent of the global population.
Also, huge numbers of detainees are held in privately-owned facilities.
The CCA owns and operates one of these facilities in Dilley, Texas. It is referred to as a “family residential center.”
One of the residents, Central American migrant Yancy Mariela Mejia Guerra, disagrees.
“It’s a prison for us and a prison for our children,” she said.
Because they are privately owned, many firms and facilities are able to worm around federal prison standards, and they do quite often.
In 2014, Judge Dolly Gee denounced the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to sidestep the Flores agreement, a 1997 agreement that forbade the unlawful detention of children and mothers.
Flores requires children be placed in “non-secure facility licensed by a child welfare entity.”
This, of course, is no issue. The Department of Family and Protective Services was able to essentially redefine these “residential centers” as suitable childcare centers. Consider yourself lucky your daycare didn’t confine you to a cell block.
As long as the federal government is awarding contracts to private firms, there is a strong incentive to arrest and detain people. In the meantime, firms like CCA and GEO will be happy to cash in on the vulnerable.
dkilcull@indiana.edu
