Texas Jail Project supports all efforts to reduce the number of privatized county jails and prisons in Texas. We work with Grassroots Leadership to supply information and to educate lawmakers and county officials about the detrimental effects of this commercialization of our justice system, but it’s an uphill battle in Texas, which leads the nation in the number of detention facilities that are privatized. Now, GEO and CCA and the other money-hungry private companies are pulling in millions off the backs of immigrants. This excellent article from the American Friends Service Committee tells what it’s like for the people held in those places and follows the money as well: “”Immigrant detention is a growth opportunity for for-profit prison companies, expanding their business model from state and federal prisons.”

Read this and see if you can find any place where it makes any mention of the detainees as human beings. There is a bit about how it will be a problem for attorneys trying to represent them, but that’s it. Why isn’t there something about the impact on the people involved and their families?
“A deal to send McLennan County inmates to Polk County to make room for more federal detainees in a Waco jail is drawing criticism from a top Polk County official who says his jail has plenty of room for the federal detainees. Some Waco attorneys also are questioning the deal, saying having their clients housed 175 miles away in Livingston would create logistical problems.
McLennan County Judge Scott Felton said officials are working out kinks in the plan. It would take effect only if the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Antonio district decides to send more detainees to Waco, which he said would benefit the county financially.”

They are working out the kinks, to make sure that the deal makes more money for the county. This is what we have become, folks.

People in the GEO-run facilities around Texas and elsewhere describe abuse, overcrowding and a lack of medical care that would be called criminal in any other setting. There is more information on this petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-ice-no-new-immigrant-detention-center-in-karnes-co-texas Background: The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has contracted with a private prison company with a

By Julia Preston, New York Times It started when Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was nine months pregnant, was pulled over by a police officer in a Nashville suburb for a routine traffic violation. By the time Mrs. Villegas was released from the county jail six days later, she had gone through