ICE announced the launch of its Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), after months of promising the locator system as part of their 2009 reform. The locator will provide information on the current holding facility, phone number, and contact information for the regional office. Two different methods, users can search is by alien registration number and country of birth or first and last name, country of birth, and date of birthday.
For more: The ODLS is located on ICE’s public website, http://www.ice.gov,

Texas Bid’ness launched a new map that looks at Texas’ private prisons. The state which has more than 70 for-profit prisons, jails, and detention centers, deals with private operators who include GEO, MTC, and CCA (a company that Business of Detention has reported on in the past), among others. The map includes facility pages and company pages.
Click to go to map.

In earnings reports released this week the nation’s two largest private prison operators cited “significant growth opportunities” for detaining immigrants, driven largely by the Obama administration’s emphasis on detaining “criminal aliens.”
The GEO Group – an international private prison operator that draws about 75 percent of its revenue from controlling a quarter of the U.S. private prison industry – said it believes that “this federal initiative to target, detain, and deport “criminal aliens” throughout the country will continue to drive the need for immigration detention beds over the next several years.”
A …

On the same day that Corrections Corporation of America opened a new 500-bed immigrant detention center in Georgia, Homeland Security officials released a highly anticipated review of detention centers. Accompanied by recommendations and next steps, the review promises better federal oversight and health care in the largely outsourced network of prisons and jails that house a daily average of 32,000 people with pending immigration and refugee status requests.
“The government has recognized that it has a massive system with serious problems, and has identified steps to ameliorate the situation,” …

On the heels of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s announcement that it will stop holding children in Corrections Corporation of America’s T. Don Hutto Detention Center, the company assured investors that they still expect plenty of business from the federal government.
“In some respects there may not have been much of a change,” said Damon Hininger, CCA’s President and Chief Operating Officer during a conference call on Thursday with investors.
Hininger said CCA had “just learned yesterday that ICE wants us to renegotiate” the Hutto contract and that a timetable for the negotiations …

Business of Detention Reporters Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh were published on The American Prospect site. In their article “Detention Retention,” they examine what enforcement and detention prospects will look like under the Obama administration.
President Obama has tried to split the difference between comprehensive immigration-reform advocates and law-and-order types. But for immigrants in detention, not much has changed since the Bush era…
Click here to read more.

Two more detention facilities will be going up in California.
Last week, the AP reported that ICE was seeking proposals to build a privately run 2,200 immigration bed facility in Los Angeles. The facility will be located within a 120 mile radius of the DHS/ICE Los Angeles Field Office currently located at 300 N. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Currently, ICE can house up to 1,400 detainees at a facility owned by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as well as other local jails it contracts.
Meanwhile, Corrections Corporation …

Terra Magazine columnist and New York-based writer, Pablo Calvi, spoke with the authors of this website about their reporting on privatized immigrant detention under the Bush administration, and what type of detention policies they anticipate from the Obama administration.
This is the first time BusinessofDetention.com has been profiled in a Spanish language publication.
You can read the story, with excerpts from the complete interview here.

The nation’s largest private prison provider has more empty beds than this time last year – occupancy rates at Corrections Corporation of America facilities now average 89.4 percent, compared to 97 percent in 2008.
But CCA is not seeing a downturn in demand. It added 9,300 new beds into service between 2008 and 2009, and saw an increase of 4.2 percent in population, company officials said Thursday in a conference call with investors to discuss their 2009 First Quarter earnings.
Many of these new beds will be filled with immigrants detained along …

No drinking water, changes of clothing, soap or shower – those are the conditions inside a Los Angeles jail for immigrants that prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California to sue the federal government. Detainees also lack access to mail and attorneys.
The facility is designed to detain immigrants for 12 hours or less, but the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency uses it to house immigrants for several weeks. The jail, known as B-18, is located in a basement.
“The facility fails on every level to house detainees in a …