Street Roots • July 22-28, 2016
News
Page 5
IMMIGRANTS, from page 4
threat of incarceration has acted as a
deterrent to illegal immigration. This is
because economic circumstances and family
responsibilities are the drivers of improper
migration, the report found.
“Nothing has worked to stem the tide,”
said Felix Recio, retired federal magistrate
judge, during a conference call arranged to
correspond with the report’s release.
Before retiring three years ago, he
presided over courtrooms in the southern
Texas border town of Brownsville, where he
handled more than 17,000 illegal
immigration cases. He was interviewed
about his experiences for the report.
“The only thing we have done is affected
the Eves of many people whose only crime
is a desire to exercise their human rights to
feed and care for themselves and their
families,” Recio said.
He does not, however, discount the
United States’ sovereignty and duty to
protect its borders.
“The challenge is to find a way of
respecting individual rights, and the rights
of government,” he said. “The problem is
that those governmental rights and
programs are too often used as justification
for violating individual rights in a
dehumanizing way.”
Report author Bethany Carson at
Grassroots Leadership said at the report’s
release that during the course of her
research, she heard heartbreaking stories
from families who had been negatively
affected by the prosecution of improper
entry.
“I saw the prosecution of men who fled
their countries after losing fathers, brothers
and cousins who were murdered by gangs,”
she said. “In our research we found that the
majority of judges and attorneys we spoke
with, who hear these cases on a daily basis,
do not believe that prosecutions are an
effective deterrent to unauthorized
migration.
“For a decade, we have wasted billions of
taxpayer dollars on a policy that lines the
coffers of for-profit prison corporations and
feeds mass incarceration,” she said.
Policy through the years
In earlier decades, migration from Mexico
to the U.S. for seasonal work was largely
legal. “Indefensible” chronicles how larger
numbers of Latinos began visiting the U.S.
during World War II legally to fill a manual
labor shortage under a government
program, a practice that was expanded over
time.
This free flow of migrant workers became
embedded in the agriculture and unskilled
labor markets. It also enabled workers to
provide their families back home in Mexico
with financial support.
In the 1960s, Congress ended the legal
flow of seasonal migrant labor between the
U.S. and Mexico after labor unions and their
allies cried foul. Workers continued to
migrate, and employers continued to give
them work - all without authorization.
In the 1980s, politicians began to exploit
the issue for political gain, the report states,
with candidates and lawmakers demonizing
migrant workers by calling them “illegal
aliens.”
President Ronald Reagan refrained the
Wyden staffer Ree Armitage, pictured at right, listens to advocates plead their case. In April, The Portland Prison Divestment CoaHtl^, h^Sd
by immigrant advocacy group Enlace, delivered more than 750 signatures to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden’s Portland office, encouraging him to
introduce legislation that would stop private prisons from qualifying for Real Estate Investment Trust status, which allows them to bring in
billions m tax-free revenue.
BY THE NUMBERS
62% Immigration detention facilities
operated by private prison companies
$1 bÌIIÌOn-plUS 2012 15 profits
of Corrections Corporation of America,
the largest private prison company
$3.38 million Corrections
Corporation of America’s spending on
lobbying in 2005, the year Operation
Streamline went into effect
SOURCES: “Indefensible” report;
Center for Responsive Politics
I । ■"■AT
J dip
CORRECTIONS CORPORATION OF AMERICA
problem as a national security issue, and the
ensuing enforcement crackdown on
improper border crossings made it
increasingly difficult for laborers to move
between the two countries, leading many
workers to settle and start families in the
U.S.
In December 2005, the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security began to implement
Operation Streamline as part of its zero
tolerance initiative.
According to the Center for Responsive
Politics, 2005 was also the year Corrections
Corporation of America spent more on
lobbying than it has any other year between
1998 and 2016, the time frame for which
data were provided. It spent $3.38 million
on lobbying that year, and with good results
- it reported that its profits increased 46
percent between 2005 and 2011, and today
it houses more illegal immigrants than any
other private prison company.
Like other private prison companies, CCA
includes a lock-up quota in its contracts.
This clause requires state and federal
governments to keep a certain number of
beds filled, or otherwise pay for unused
beds at the expense of the taxpayer.
The authors of “Indefensible” suggest
Operation Streamline was a way to placate
Congress into passing some kind of
immigration reform package. It just didn’t
work.
Now, thousands of these workers are
sitting behind bars for what, the report’s
authors say, amounts to simply trying to
provide for their families.
While the U.S. has seen bipartisan
support for reducing the nation’s prison
populations and ramping down the war on
drugs, there has been little effort to address
the growing problem of migrant
incarceration, the report’s authors argued.
But advocacy groups are finding they have
some allies in Congress, including Wyden,
who on July 14 followed through on Enlace’s
request and introduced legislation that
would exempt private prisons from claiming
Real Estate Investment Trust status.
Private prisons have avoided paying more
than $113 million in taxes by using this tax
law since 2013, according to Enlace.
“As part of rethinking our criminal justice
system, particularly as it results in the mass
incarceration of low-income and minority
individuals, the tax rules for (Real Estate
Investment Trust status) must be changed
so that we are not encouraging companies
to unjustly profit from prison detention
services,” Wyden said at the announcement
of his bill.
“This legislation would significantly
weaken the for-profit prison industry,”
Enlace’s Shank said.
After Enlace decided to target for-profit
prisons, it founded the National Prison
Divestment Campaign, which now includes
black, Latino and immigrant groups working
together, to “end private prisons as one part
of a larger push to end the era of mass
criminalization of communities of color,”
Shank said.
In addition to eliminating private prisons’
ability to claim tax-exempt status, the
coalition is pushing for divestment in
Corrections Corporation of America and
GEO Group, as well as banks that financially
back them.
According to the coalition, universities,
churches and local and state governments
invest in private prisons through
management companies such as Blackrock,
Lazard and Vanguard without even knowing
it.
In February, Portland’s Socially
Responsible Investments Committee voted
unanimously to recommend the city of
Portland divest from Wells Fargo & Co. due
to its financial backing of for-profit prisons.
As of March 31, Portland had a market value
of $62 million in Wells Fargo holdings.
According to Enlace, this was the first
time a public body voted to divest from
Wells Fargo based on its involvement with
the prison industry.
emily@streetroots. org