Importing illegal immigrants – into private Georgia prisons

[pampango]

Interesting piece in The Nation on the attempt in Ocilla, Ga., to balance off the loss of illegal immigrant farm labor by importing illegal immigrants – into a private detention facility. From the lede:

Deportations have reached record levels under President Barack Obama, and demand for detention facilities has increased. Starting in 2002, ICE had funding for 19,444 beds per year, according to an ICE report. Today, ICE spends about $2 billion per year on almost twice the number of beds.

ICE’s reliance on facilities like the Irwin County Detention Center has put small rural towns at the center of one of today’s most contentious policy arguments—how to enforce immigration law. A yearlong investigation … shows how much politics has come to rule detention policy.

Even as Georgia and Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out undocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that politicians from both states were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in.

ICE succumbed to the pressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially unstable facility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants cheaply. That promise came at the expense of the health, welfare and rights to due process of some 350 immigrants detained daily in Ocilla.

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/04/11/importing-illegal-immigrants-%E2%80%93-into-private-georgia-prisons/

Those Southern republicans want to "self-deport" all illegal immigrants who are working and studying in their states. At the same time they want to import the same folks after they are incarcerated.

The new southern republican motto: The only good Hispanic immigrant is an incarcerated one. That's when they really do contribute to our state economy.

Plus, it feeds the southern repubs fear theme as to the cost of illegal immigration to their states. "Just look at how much is spent incarcerating illegal immigrants in our state." (Perhaps forgetting to point out that they requested that those folks be sent to their prisons.)

At least, the story made no mention that the prison in Georgia planned to contract out new inmates to farmers as has been proposed in the past. Let's hope this is not just an omission by the writer. It would truly be ironic if illegal immigrant inmates were contracted out to work for the same farmers who had been employing them before Georgia passed its immigration law.

[izquierdista]

1. Ironic?

Don't you mean 'going according to plan'?

[pampango]

2. You're right. That would be a more accurate way to describe GOP hypocrisy. n/t

[saras]

3. Sounds like a long-term plan to re-implement slavery. Just a couple of steps left to go.