What's All the Commotion?

Immigration prosecutions under President Obama are at the same levels they were under the Bush administration.  Both ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) have been prosecuting thousands of immigration violations, so I cannot understand why Governor Rick Perry of Texas, like so many conservatives (politicians, pundits, whoever), is so hell-bent on criticizing the Obama administration for not enforcing our country's immigration laws.  All these prosecutions are clogging up court systems throughout the country, but most notably in the southwest; in fact, more than half of ALL federal prosecutions are immigration-related; nearly 95% of the cases public defenders in Texas are dealing with concern civil immigration violations (as opposed to criminal cases), with them handling up to 180 cases every day.  This obviously incapacitates the public defender from mounting any sort of substantial defense for his clients, which completely undermines the mission of the office.

What bothers me most of all is that the conservative rhetoric surrounding immigration doesn't seem to be at all concerned with facts or statistics so much as emotional appeals, especially to people in immigrant-heavy areas.  Senator John Cornyn blasted Obama's record on prosecuting immigrants, while he actually oversaw more than 21,000 MORE removals in his first year in office for criminal activity than in 2008.  Cornyn however complains about the drop in non-criminal removals, which of course fires up the right and gets his voting base agitated against Obama and the Democrats.  But frankly non-criminal aliens should be of far less concern to the government than criminal ones, but as I said, conservative discourse tends to ignore important and relevant figures to blow partially-relevant issues way out of proportion.  When you have people like Lou Dobbs, now Glenn Beck and other fauxnews blowhards spouting off about how our borders aren't secure and immigrants are stealing all our jobs in the face of evidence that shows this administration is even more harsh on immigration than its predecesor, and in light of the fact that the number of immigrants dropped by its largest margin in the past 3 decades over the past year, the discussion tends to move away from the rational to the irrationality you see in today's media (here is the LA times article that mentions the drop in immigrants, along with some other very interesting numbers regarding immigration and its prosecution).  By ramping up the anti-immigrant rhetoric, conservative pundits have been able to practically paint immigrants as an alien occuping force that needs some sort of militaristic response, and we wind up with absurd, overtly-racist laws like Arizona's SB1070, which was passed despite the fact that Arizona ranked first and second, respectively, in ICE and CBP prosecutions (meanwhile all the discussion from conservatives in favor of the bill was about how the Obama administration doesn't prosecute enough immigration violators in their state). 

All we have done by increasing the amount of immigrants we lock up and prosecute is increase the amount of money spent on ineffective programs.  We spend billions every year to incarcerate and prosecute people for civil violations, spending literally hundreds of dollars per prisoner per day to keep them locked up.  Our country needs to realize that the immigration detention system we currently have is designed for nothing more than to enhance the wealth and power of the private prison industry giants, many of whom are supported, directly or indirectly, by our government, both democrat and republican alike.  And with all the money that CCA, GEO, and every other private prison contractor spends to ensure it will continue to get new contracts, despite repeated abuses of human rights, its no wonder they are able to continue to fleece American taxpayers into allowing them to exploit our broken system for their own financial gain.

An Overzealous Immigration Detention System

The private prison industry has long been a beneficiary of our country's increased emphasis on immigration detention under Bush/Cheney.  Nearly 98% of prisons constructed for the federal government over the past decade have been private; it makes sense because we needed a place to put the extra 30,000 immigrants we now incarcerate under the strict new measures his administration enforced (a 1,000 PERCENT increase over what was held under Clinton).  What makes all that even more revolting is the fact that Cheney owns a lot of stock in the Vanguard group, which has a lot of its investments tied up in the GEO group.  But back to my point; our country is ridiculously overzealous when it comes to incarcerating immigrants, most of whom haven't committed any crime other than being in this country illegally.  The title link goes to a horrifying story of the ordeal a US citizen was put through at the hands of gung-ho ICE agents.  If our government maybe wasn't quite so concerned with locking up ever-increasing numbers of immigrants all so Cheney can make a few extra bucks on his way out, this wouldn't happen to our own citizens.

Deaths and Cover-ups

Through Freedom of Information Act requests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the NY Times and the ACLU uncovered information on hundreds of deaths of detained immigrants in private facilities that had not been properly reported over the course of about a decade. These were people detained by the Dept of Homeland Security under booshy's ramped-up immigration detention policy, which has been supported in large part by an explosion in private detention (of course, ole dick owns a huge share in the parent company of the second-biggest private prison company, and the one that has more contracts to house federal immigration detainees, but that's a different story).

Essentially, this is a prime example of why private companies should not be permitted to perform basic governmental functions, especially when they aren't subject to open records laws, making them able to easily conceal things like deaths.

Why I Hate GEO today

the GEO group just reached a settlement in the case of a beating death of one of its inmates (actually, the inamte was killed while guards and the warden looked on, then GEO tried to cover up the incident by destroying evidence). I know this isn't exactly a new reason to hate them, but I hate them for their track record and inability to manage a prison humanely, while they reap tens of millions of dollars in profits. I just can't fathom why a company that repeatedly pays out millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuits for their actions/inaction can still be in business. Oh, that's right; dick**** cheney owns a large stake of their parent company. I hate you too dick, because your influence over bushy in immigration policy pretty much single-handedly resurrected the private prison industry. You should be in prison, preferably a GEO one where the guards and administration turn a blind eye to assaults.

Greasing the wheels

CCA has spent thousands of dollars on ethically-questionable fundraisers for Congressman Benny Thompson (D-MS), who is currently under investigation in an ethics probe. They apparently spent this money for a party in honor of Mr. Thompson, which was thrown by a private company run by two current and one former House staffers. This is bad because these staffers are using their political connections to increase their own personal wealth (see: everything Dick Cheney does), and CCA is happy to contribute.

Why I Hate GEO today

A top-flight fundraiser for dubya is on trial for insider trading involving his stock activity with Correctional Services Corp right before it was purchased by the GEO group. Zach Zachariah's (seriously, that's his name) brother was working as a consultant for GEO at the time and tipped him off to the acquisition, in which he purchased 35,000 shares of stock at $21 that was going to be sold at $26 the next day.

Mind you, this is the same company that ole dick was involved with (i.e. investing tons of money in) that spawned the conflict-of-interest suits brought by DA Juan Guerra about a year ago. That suit revolved around cheney having a considerable sum invested in the company while dictating (yes, that's what he did) immigration policy that subsequently exploded the immigration detention business, of which GEO has been a major player. So cheney dictated policy for his own financial advantage. Who would have thought?

So this is now two people very closely tied to Bush that have had very shady investment activity in one of the major private prison operators in the country. No wonder they're able to continue their operations in light of the fact that they continuously fail to live up to the standards of government-run facilities.

A conflict of interest? Not if Dick Cheney is involved

Dick Cheney’s son-in-law, a former lobbyist for CCA, moved to DHS some time ago and has played a large role in the incarceration of undocumented immigrants, which has resulted in CCA drawing more than half its business from locking up immigrants (costing taxpayers nearly $3 million every day).

PS - you should also look back at some stories from near the beginning of 2009 concerning a DA in I want to say Willacy County TX named Juan Angel Guerra. He brought indictments against Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez for what essentially amounted to a conflict of interest along these lines. If I remember correctly, Cheney invested in the parent company of the GEO group heavily right around the same time the boosh administration ramped up its immigration prosecution (which saved the entire private prison industry), similar to how he invested heavily in haliburton and then had the government contract with them for the war, giving him millions of dollars.

PPS - I hate dick cheney too. hate him. It astounds me that there seems to be no strong impetus to bring him to justice. he's the biggest criminal this country has seen in a long time, far worse than Bernie Madoff, because at least Bernie didn't cause thousands of US men and women to die for a few bucks. but I digress...

They're taking all our money

CCA reported its quarterly earnings today. They earned $32.6 million in net income over the past quarter (3 months, or about 90 days). That comes down to more than 322 THOUSAND dollars EVERY DAY that they made in profit, from taxpayer dollars. What is even worse is that "conservative" economic policies and politicians are the biggest proponents of private prisons, while they complain about taxing people who earn more than $250,000 per year to improve health coverage. I guess it makes sense, though, since so many of them invest in private prisons, like Mr. Cheney and Gonzalez.