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November
2, 2006
Earning Millions from the Misery of the
Poor
Slave
Labor in Private Prisons
By JOHN ROSS
SAN CRISTOBAL CHIAPAS.
Lazaro Perez (not his real name), a
poor Tzotzil Indian farmer from San Juan Chamula Chiapas, caught
the old bus out of the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez for the
three-day journey to the northern border. Lazaro was determined
to cross the brutal desert that separated him from the American
dream - a cousin in Phoenix Arizona where there is a growing
Chamulan community had written that there was plenty of work
there.
Disembarking in El Altar, Sonora
on the lip of the desert, Lazaro and a handful of fellow Chamulans
with whom he had hopped the bus in Tuxtla contracted a "guia"
(guide) for $1000 a head to get them across the foreboding badlands
where more than 200 have perished each year for a decade. But
"the corridor of death" as this wedge of the border
west of Yuma is called is not such an easy place to die in these
days. The beefed-up "Migra" (Border Patrol or Immigration
Customs Enforcement as Homeland Security now calls it) aided
and abetted by National Guard "scouts" brought in to
back up the ICE under Operation Jumpstart as one facet of the
Bush administration's politically motivated immigration crackdown,
is corralling record numbers of undocumented travelers in this
sector and Lazaro and his pals were taken into custody not an
hour into their trek across the desert.
Out a $1000 he had borrowed
from relatives, penniless, and in detention in a strange land,
Lazaro wished he had never left Chiapas. The Chamulan's bad luck
is shared by thousands of new would-be "indocumentados"
these days all along the 3000-kilometer border between Mexico
and Fortress America as immigration detentions skyrocket.
But Lazaro Perez's misfortune
is making a fortune for one of the fastest-growing industries
in the border region private immigration detention centers
operated by such titans of the euphemistically-named "corrections
industry" as GEO (formerly Wackenhut) of Boca Raton, Florida
and the billion buck Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
out of Nashville.
Last spring's hopeful outburst
of activism for immigration reform that put millions of marchers
into the streets of U.S. cities, has soured into a summer and
fall of frustration. The more liberal Kennedy-McCain bill on
the Senate side that would have provided a difficult path to
legalization for millions
of undocumented workers (millions more would have been deported)
ran into a stone wall over in the House where HR 4437, a bill
sponsored by James Sensenbrenner (Republican Wisconsin) and backed
up by the usual nativist lynch mob, offered only punitive responses
to the plight of the indocumentados streaming in from the south.
HB 4437 would criminalize illegal immigration and would even
throw in jail those who offer the migrant workers a glass of
water, build hundreds of miles of border walls, and grow the
Migra by 15,000 troops.
"Citizen" hearings
held by Republican House members around the U.S. this summer
turned into an anti-immigration circus, converting the misery
of millions of migrants into a "National Security"
issue, another front in Bush's Terror War - to the delight of
private contractors like GEO and CCA.
By Labor Day, immigrant rights
group could not muster up 10,000 marchers on the U.S. Capital
steps.
Split off from HB 4437, a provision
calling for 700 miles of border fencing (really a triple barrier
wall) was signed into law by Bush in the run-up to the November
mid-term elections.
The big prison privatizers
are, of course, gung ho for Sensenbrenner and its various legislative
offshoots such as the "Safe Border Act" if enacted,
they are going to get fat on the hapless new arrivals. Whereas
Kennedy-McCain does promise 2.2 million deportations of undocumented
workers with less than five years U.S. residence, repatriation
would be voluntary pending registration in a legal guest worker
program and would involve no detention time.
On the other side of the ledger,
the private prison czars figure that if the hardnosed provisions
of HB 4437 become the law of the land, the federal government
is going to need about 27,000 new beds each day over the next
18 months although at $95 a night in detention costs, Motel
Six would seem to be a cheaper fix then private detention centers.
Nonetheless, prospects of juicy contracts to come have the industry
salivating.
The privatization of the detention
side of the prison-industrial complex has been expanding exponentially
since the new millennium kicked in - in the past six years, eight
out of 16 federal immigration detention facilities have fallen
into private hands. Moreover, 57% of all so-called "illegal
aliens" are now housed in county jails far away from the
border, about a fifth of which are administered by the privatizers.
Although the number of migrant
workers on their way to El Norte has declined slightly in recent
years, more indocumentados are being captured and the Feds need
somewhere to warehouse them Homeland Security's veto of
"catch & release" policies for all but Mexican
"illegals" that previously allowed non-Mexican detainees
to stay out of detention while their cases were being adjudicated,
is further straining the federal system.
For the privatizers, managing
the detention centers requires minimal investment compared to
criminal incarceration facilities the no-frills lock-ups
do not require legally mandated recreation, educational, or law
library components that must be made available to common criminals.
Although the U.S. prison population 1.5 million inmates
remains the most voluminous on Planet Earth, incarceration
rates are slowing to a little over 1%a year increase while the
detention side is running 21% annual growth.
As the detention market balloons
so do the fortunes of the corrections titans CCA's detention
facilities turned a $95 million profit last year and its stock
is up to $53 a share according to this morning's Wall Street
Journal. Similarly, GEO stock has boomed 68% in the past year.
"The detention market should grow by $200 to $250,000 in
the next two years" figured Patrick Swindle of Avondale
LLC in an instructive July 27th New York Times business page
piece. "What's great is that this industry promises steadily
growing profits," offered an upbeat Anton High of Jefferies
& Company brokers (ibid.)
The detention market needs
tough enforcement laws to fly and the corrections industry contracts
high-powered Washington lobbyists to grease the wheels of Congress,
prison activists like Kansas-based Frank Smith contend
although Smith says the bucks are hard to track. Reluctant to
advertise how they profit on the migrants' misery, the big guns
sneak in under the radar, masquerading as PACs to bulk up the
war chests of such immigration hawks as San Diego's Duncan Hunter,
Colorado's Tom Tancredo, and the venerable Sensenbrenner.
The money is easier to follow
on the state side. Numero Uno amongst U.S. politicos on the
private prison hand outs is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
who has received nearly $50,000 from the industry since 2004
according to the Montana Open Secrets project New Mexico
has privatized more prisons than any other state in the U.S.
union with over half of its lock-ups now being managed by the
corrections moguls.
The criminalization of undocumented
workers presents a cornucopia of opportunities for private industry.
For example, boosting Border Patrol numbers to 15,000 agents
boosts the stock price of VF Industries of Nashville which manufactures
the Migra's uniforms although VF can no longer subcontract
out to Mexican maquiladoras to assemble Border Patrol outfits
for fear that Migra uniforms will fall into the hands of narco-terrorists
(federal prison inmates are reported to be the top candidate
for the newly-returned jobs.)
Food and health providers are
making a bundle contracting with the private detention centers
to provide bottom line services and the 700 miles of new border
"fence" (read wall) that Bush has just signed off on,
will make construction contractors happy it is suggested
that they will employ "illegal aliens" to cut corners.
Transporting the detained indocumentados
is also a lucrative outcropping of draconian immigration enforcement
policies. Indeed, the Mexican carrier Aeromexico operating on
contacts from CSA Aviation grossed $13.5 million in 2005 flying
two daily "voluntary return" flights a day from Phoenix-Tucson
that carried 20,592 detained Mexicans back into the interior
of their country. Among the passengers was Lazaro Perez (not
his real name) of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas.
Ross will present both volumes
at Modern Times Bookstore 888 Valencia Street in San Francisco's
Mission District Wednesday Nov. 8th at 7 PM. FREE
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