Ecclesio.com Conversation on Money in Politics: Caught in the Net of Corporate Greed: Our Immigrant Sisters and Brothers

This week, May 18-22, Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, is guest-hosting a conversation on money in politics on Ecclesio.com. Today's article is written by OPW Young Adult Volunteer AmyBeth Willis, exploring the links between for-profit corporations and the incarceration of immigrants. 

“You cannot serve God and wealth.” – Matthew 6:24b

At any given time in the United States of America, 34,000 jail beds are made ready for immigrants to fill. According to the April 2015 report by the advocacy group Grassroots Leadership ‘Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota’, sixty-two percent of these beds are now operated by private prison corporations, which rake in millions of profits from government contracts. Immigrants are now the largest market for these corporations.

Moreover, millions of dollars have been poured into the federal justice system to fund  the salaries of privately contracted defense attorneys, for example and into internal immigration enforcement, to accommodate the arrest, prosecution, detention, and deportation of immigrants. Immigrant detention has contributed to the 500 percent increase in our nation’s incarcerated population. In 2013, immigrants made up 10 percent of the federal prison population. This mass detention of immigrants has helped to increase the number of deportations. Under the Obama Administration, two million people have been deported. [1] This system is an affront to the Christian values of acting justly and welcoming the stranger.

History

The boom in modern immigrant detention began in the 1980s when the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now the Department of Homeland Security, DHS) signed a contract with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to detain immigrants in response to the surge of immigrants from Central America. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act mandated that undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions be detained without bond; it also removed judicial discretion to review asylum cases of undocumented border crossers.

After September 11, 2001, INS was renamed the Department of Homeland Security and split into U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This blurred the distinction between civil and criminal immigration enforcement. At the same time, from 2004 to 2012 the number of Border Patrol Agents on the ground rose by 85 percent, increasing apprehension capacity. [2]

The Immigrant Detention Bed Quota

In the mid-1990’s our country detained around 7,000 immigrants per day. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of detained immigrants hovered around 20,000. In 2009, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) added language to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Appropriations bill instituting a quota of 33,400 detention beds. It has been renewed in the yearly federal budget since then, increasing to 34,000 in 2013. The market has caught up with this demand through the expansion of the private prison industry; its size has risen by 47 percent in the last ten years.[3]

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement maintains 82 detention centers across the nation to hold immigrants under removal proceedings. In fiscal year 2014, 32,163 immigrants were detained per day; this costs taxpayers two billion dollars per year, or five million dollars per day. [4]

The centers are concentrated in Arizona, Texas, and Georgia, with the rest scattered throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Prisons incarcerated 19,100 immigrants found in violation of federal immigration laws in 2013. This is separate from those detained by ICE under deportation proceedings.

Private Prison Industry Control

Out of eight private prison corporations, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group dominate the private prison industry; currently they each run twelve ICE-contracted facilities. Together they run eight out of the ten largest immigrant detention facilities in the nation. Since the implementation of the bed quota, CCA saw its profits rise from $133 million in 2007 to $195 million in 2014. In the same period, GEO Group’s profits rose by 244 percent from $41.8 million to $143.8 million. [5]

CCA and GEO Group’s domination of the industry did not occur by accident. From their start, both companies have captured the immigrant detention market through federal lobbying. Between 2008 and 2014, together they spent $16 million dollars. At the same time, the private prison industry donated “over $132,000 in campaign contributions to members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, the birthplace and point of control for the immigrant detention quota.”[6]

Other companies stand to gain from increases in immigrant detention. G4S Wackenhut, a security company connected to GEO Group, also profits from the increased enforcement and detention of undocumented immigrants. They were first subcontracted in 2006 to transport immigrants to Border Patrol Stations after being apprehended in the borderlands. Their contract was renewed in 2013 for $234 million dollars. Once under Border Patrol custody, immigrants are detained for three or four days, often subjected to abuse anddeprived of food or water.

Why Detain?

Although patterns of migration to the United States ebb and flow with U.S. economic productivity, the government maintains that detention is a deterrent to future immigration. [7] A 2013 report “In the Shadow of the Wall,” published by the University of Arizona and George Washington University “found that the majority of migrants intended to cross again, that the effect of deterrence was difficult to measure, and that deterrence has a limited impact compared with other factors such as family and economic need.”[8] As deterrence policies gain steam, migrants attempt to cross through more dangerous and remote terrain, resulting in more deaths on the border.[9]

More than detention itself, the increasing privatization of these prisons is hailed as a cost saving mechanism. However, Gary Mead, a former ICE Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations, admitted that no independent studies have verified whether private prisons really cut costs.[10]

The government also claims that many immigrants present a flight risk as they undergo removal proceedings and therefore need to be detained. [11] Yet, the rise in apprehensions and detention has meant that the average wait time for a final ruling in an immigration court case is 550 days, greatly prolonging that detention.

Policies Promote Apprehension and Subsequent Incarceration

Policies such as Secure Communities and Operation Streamline and aggressive state laws such as S.B. 1070 in Arizona assist in the criminalization, apprehension, and detention of immigrants.

Secure Communities (S-Comm) was implemented in 2008 to aid the collaboration between the FBI and local law enforcement to detect national security threats. However, ICE uses it to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. When someone is arrested, their fingerprints are searched against  a national database to identify immigration violations. The program PEP-Comm, Priority Enforcement Program, replaced S-Comm in early 2015, but several of its problematic aspects remain.

In 2005, Operation Streamline began in Del Rio, Texas to fast track the prosecution of border crossers en masse. Six U.S/Mexico border cities followed suit, citing Streamline as a strategy to deter migration. In Tucson, Monday through Friday, up to 70 migrants are charged with illegal reentry, convicted and sentenced to one to six months of jail time within a short afternoon proceeding. Now, the majority of defense attorneys for migrants are privately contracted.[12] This initiative costs Arizona $120 million in court proceedings.[13] Yuma, Arizona, recently rolled back its use of Streamline because of exorbitant costs.

The state of Arizona passed S.B. 1070 in 2010 to re-classify state crimes related to immigration or legal status. CCA as a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization of state legislators, large corporations and corporate associations, was a part of the task force that drafted the law. [14] Thirty of the thirty-six legislators who co-sponsored the bill received contributions from three different private prison corporations.[15] S.B. 1070, dubbed the “show me your papers” law, encouraged local police officers to identify residents they suspect to be undocumented. Since its implementation, it has resulted in rampant racial profiling of Latinos in the state. In 2012, the Supreme Court did not challenge the “show me your papers” part of the law; this meant racially motivated stops and incarceration have continued. Copycat state legislation in Utah, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, and South Carolina followed, but courts have struck down the harshest parts of these laws.[16]

Family Detention

One of the most egregious forms of immigrant detention re-entered the stage last summer: family detention. Thousands of Central American families (68,684 family units arrived here in 2014) fled from violence, gang activity, and poverty to our borders, seeking a safe haven. ICE, at the Obama Administration’s direction, began to detain these mothers and children. Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, claims that, “family detentions were meant to send a signal to other immigrants that they would not be simply released into the U.S. if they crossed the border.”[17] According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the majority of these families would qualify for asylum with proper legal representation.

This also has not occurred by accident– CCA and GEO Group lobbied heavily to secure contracts for family detention centers in South Texas. In June of 2014, family detention bed capacity was 90; by June of 2015 around 4,000 beds will be available. [18]

Advocates visiting these facilities have documented dehydrated and undernourished children. CCA operates the massive, 2,400 bed South Texas Family Residential Center, which opened in Dilley, Texas, in December of 2014. Recently, a group of mothers at the Karnes County Residential Center (operated by GEO Group) in Karnes City, Texas, have gone on two separate hunger strikes to protest the impact of incarceration on their children, as well to bring to light the harsh conditions, and the mistreatment by officials in the facility. [19] In 2009, the Obama administration closed the T. Don Hutto Residential Center (managed by CCA) in Taylor, Texas; there, children were forced to wear prison garb and access to medical care and nutrition was inadequate. [20]

Our Faith Call

Immigrant detention flies in the face of the core values of our Christian faith. For God calls us in Exodus 22:21 to not “mistreat or oppress a foreigner.” We also must recognize and welcome Christ in the stranger (Matthew 25:35). Jesus warns us in Matthew 6:24 that “No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money.” Privatized immigrant detention is a glaring example of how our nation’s policies serve moneyed interests over the common good. The very essence of corporations whose profits grow through the exploitation of immigrants is sinful. Thousands of our migrant brothers and sisters pay the price of this greed.

AmyBeth Willis hails from Murfreesboro, TN, and is a 2013 graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, GA.  In college, she studied Sociology, Religion and Spanish.  She spent the 2013-2014 year as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ.  She is currently serving her second YAV year in the PC(USA) Office of Public Witness, in Washington, DC. She is passionate about the connection between her faith and justice work, especially in the areas of immigration, advocacy, and education.

[1] http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[2]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/race-multicultural/lost-in-detention/map-the-u-s-immigration-detention-boom/

[3]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[4]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[5]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[6]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/isabel-garcia/op-ed-response-to-senate-resolution-104_b_7154378.html

[8] http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/10/17/operation-streamline-unjust/17444829/

[9] http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/nmd_fact_sheet_operation_streamline.pdf

[10]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[11]http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/node/2381

[12] http://endstreamline.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/OSL-estimated-costs.FY2013.pdf

[13] http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/nmd_fact_sheet_operation_streamline.pdf

[14] http://www.npr.org/2010/10/28/130833741/prison-economics-help-drive-ariz-immigration-law

[15]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[16] http://www.nilc.org/sb1070fouryearslater.html

[17] http://www.ibtimes.com/immigrant-mothers-begin-second-hunger-strike-massive-texas-detention-center-1883194

[18]http://grassrootsleadership.org/sites/default/files/reports/quota_report_final_digital.pdf

[19] http://www.ibtimes.com/immigrant-mothers-begin-second-hunger-strike-massive-texas-detention-center-1883194

[20] https://www.aclu.org/aclu-challenges-prison-conditions-hutto-detention-center

Ecclesio.com Conversation on Money in Politics: Breaking the Chains Between Campaign Finance and Private Prisons

This week, May 18-22, Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, is guest-hosting a conversation on money in politics on Ecclesio.com. A new article will be posted each day. Here is Emerson Hunger Fellow Nora Leccese's piece on the connection between money in politics and private prison profiteering. 

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“[The Abolition of private prisons] is a cornerstone of our collective work to put justice back into the so-called criminal justice system.” This bold statement made in 2003 by the 215^th General Assembly (2003) is still resonant over a decade later as the U.S. continues to invest heavily in private prisons. Despite documented human rights abuses and fiscal mismanagement, there are nearly twice the number of federal prisoners incarcerated in private facilities today as there were in 2001. The massive transfer of taxpayer dollars to the coffers of private prison operators has broken state budgets, torn families apart, and has failed to make our communities measurably more secure. Why, then, are we investing in for-profit prisons at unprecedented rates? Part of the answer lies in the substantial power and influence accrued to private prison operators by lavish campaign contributions and lobbying efforts. In order to renew our democracy and reform our criminal justice system, we must sever the link between campaign finance and the privatization of the prison industry.

Today, the U.S. incarcerates 2.1 million people at any given time; according to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” Over the past 40 years, our prison population has grown exponentially due in part to a strict punitive measures enacted as part of the War on Drugs in the 1980’s which imposed mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. As social programs were systematically stripped and city infrastructure left to crumble, the forgotten residents of many inner cities faced intense scrutiny for rising crime rates and drug use. Although this social injustice can be traced back to historical disinvestment and the outcome of legacies of racism in communities of color, the state response was to criminalize the drug user.  As described by activist and intellectual Angela Davis, “We began to see the prison emerge as a major institution to address the problems that were produced by the deindustrialization, lack of jobs, less funding into education, lack of education, the closedown of systems that were designed to assist people who had mental and emotional problems.”

As a result of the crackdown on crime, prison populations and budgets began to swell in the early 1980’s and a faction of enterprising prison administrations saw an opportunity to privatize incarceration, thereby making it profitable. Their pitch was that the private sector could warehouse inmates at a fraction of the cost (this has since proved to be untrue in most cases) of public prisons, which was an appealing argument to cash and capacity-strapped states. Since that time, corporations have reaped huge profits from prison construction, management, and from the provision of subcontracted services to prisoners (food, health care, pay phones); the market for calls made from prison pay phones alone is estimated at $1 billion a year. Yet another source of profit is prison labor; a wide variety of companies—including such familiar ones as Victoria’s Secret, Dell, Motorola, and Microsoft—have taken advantage of the low cost, and armed supervision, of prison labor. The success of prison privatization was no mere accident; it was a bitter cocktail of conservative, tough-on-crime ideology and enterprising private prison barons who sought to cement the demand for their services in the rule of law.

Since 2000, the three largest private prison companies—CCA, GEO and Cornell Companiesi—have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates, including Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. Giving to state level politicians during the last five election cycles was much higher: $6,092,331. Data maintained by the National Institute on Money in State Politics also reveal the following about private prison campaign contributions: Between 2003 and 2011, CCA contributed to over 600 state candidates, and GEO contributed to over 400.  Both corporations have established their own Political Action Committees (PACs). These companies backed a high proportion of candidates who ultimately won elections, which may indicate a strategy of focusing contributions on candidates likely to wield power, not a comprehensive partisan agenda.

Examples of private prison contracts awarded in the wake of private-prison funded campaigns riddle the landscape of electoral politics, and are not corralled on one side of the aisle.

• Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) accepted at least $60,000 from people directly connected to the Corrections Corporation of America, and Arizona has lead the country in the expansion and privatization of detention centers for undocumented immigrants.

• An examination of campaign finance records shows that GEO Group gave over $11,000 in contributions directly to the campaigns of 14 of the 20 members of the Florida state Budget Committee that approved a massive prison privatization bill, by a vote of 14-4. Since 2006, GEO Group has spent a total of $1.3 million in campaign contributions in Florida alone and has been rewarded with hearty new contracts for prison healthcare.

• In 2014, Governor Jerry Brown (D) of California received $54,000 from GEO for his reelection campaign. As reported in Truthout, in April 2014, California subsequently contracted with GEO Group to open a 260-bed women’s prison. The contract allows GEO to double the number of beds, potentially increasing its four-year revenue from $38,132,640 to $66,394,276 in California.

The influence of corporate dollars is evident not only in allotment of federal and state contracts, but in the crafting of legislation itself.  One of the primary tools of the private prison sector is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is a collection of about 2000 legislators and corporate leaders.  They meet once a year to draft model legislation intended for introduction in state houses around the country.

The ALEC yearly meeting, attended by Arizona lawmakers and CCA executives, produced the language for Arizona Senate Bill 1070 which required police to detain anyone suspected of being undocumented. Such detentions led to a swelling demand for detention centers, and a predictable call by Arizona legislators to build more detention facilities.

It is a sly relationship between politicians and corporate executives. Elected officials are careful not to exchange contracts for exact dollar amounts, only to align their platform with business priorities and create opportunities to expand the domain of prison privatization. As long as politicians privilege the demands of this industry over the needs of their own constituents there can be no justice in the United States. And without justice, there can be no peace.

Mission Coordination Committee - Advocacy as Discipleship

This post is a continuation of Advocacy as Discipleship Pre-GA Issue. This edition of this publication seeks to provide an preview of the social justice business before the 221st General Assembly (2014) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Mission Coordination – Committee 8

Divestment from For-Profit Prisons

Sponsored by the Presbyterian Mission Agency, item 08-09 recommends that the category of publicly traded corporations that directly manage or operate for-profit prisons, jails, and/or detention centers be added to the list of companies from which the GA urges divestment and/or proscription of investment ownership. This is to say the recommendation, in response to a direction from the 220^th GA (2012), is asking that any for-profit prisons, jails, and/or detention centers be added to the list of companies in which the church will no longer invest.

To read the complete items of business before the Mission Coordination Committee, visit the General Assembly's business website at http://www.pc-biz.org.