The list of changes were leaked in a memo to the Houston Chronicle this week as it begins to implement the changes in low-risk units. Some of the changes will take place in 30 days, while others will take longer.

Other changes to be implemented will include allowing detainees to wear regular clothes, offering movie nights, bingo, dance and cooking classes, fresh plants, and four hours of recreation. ICE says that there will be no additional costs as a result of these changes.

The nine CCA facilities include Florence Service Processing Center, Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, Eloy Detention Center, Houston Contract Detention Center, Laredo Contract Detention Facility, North Georgia Detention Center, Otay Detention Center, Stewart Detention Center, and T. Don Hutto Detention Center.

It is unknown whether other facilities such as those owned be GEO Group will make changes or whether the nine CCA facilities will become the sole hub for low-risk detainees. Currently, ICE has agreements with almost 300 facilities to hold detainees. The CCA facilities are some of the largest facilities holding detainees today, which in the past has been scolded for inhumane conditions.

While ICE Union reps argue that these new changes raise safety questions, immigration advocate welcome the changes. This is a huge win for advocates, who have been pressuring the Obama administration for comprehensive immigration reform — especially since reform is likely to go untouched in Congress before the 2010 mid-term election.

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 Third Quarter earnings report released on Monday shows The GEO Group is adding another 1,100 beds to its Aurora, Colorado, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center for a total of 1,532 beds. As part of its renewed contract with ICE for the continued management of our Northwest Detention Center, capacity there will be increased from 1,030 to 1,575 beds.

Today Corrections Corporation of America – which manages more than 50 percent of all prison beds under private contract in the United States – said in its Third Quarter earnings report that revenue from its federal customers increased 4.9 percent, “primarily driven by the commencement of our new management contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons at our newly constructed Adams County Correctional Center.” This facility in Natchez, Mississippi houses 2,567 “criminal alien offenders – low-security illegal immigrants who committed offenses in the United States and will be returned to their country of origin upon completion of their sentence.”

The company’s newly appointed CEO, Damon Hininger, told investors during a conference call that the company continues to focus on filling vacant capacity. He said he was pleased with an increase of 1,300 immigrant detainees in CCA’s U.S. Marshall’s facilities since January 2009. The company recently completed renovations of its 502-bed North Georgia Detention Center. It began receiving detainees from ICE in October and currently houses about 100 people.

Hininger said CCA has its eye on an ICE contract to build and operate a new 2,200-bed detention center in Los Angeles, and expects a procurement as early as December, though the company is not listed among the interested vendors on a government website listing the request for proposals for the contract.

Funding for expanded immigrant detention is provided in the FY2010 budget for the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a member agency. President Obama signed the budget into law on October 29. It includes $5.4 billion for ICE, about half a billion more than in FY2009. From this amount, $2.5 billion is allocated for detention and removal operations, and at least $200 million is provided for the Secure Communities program, which began in 2008 to screen for undocumented immigrants by taking the fingerprints of anyone booked into a local jail and checking for a match in ICE’s database.

Critics like Joan Friedland, Immigration Policy Director for the National Immigration Law Center, have noted that as of March 22, 2009, “19,495 individuals were identified as undocumented through the Secure Communities program. Of these, only 1,436 were identified as ‘Level 1 criminals.’ The rest were arrested for lesser crimes, which include minor traffic offenses like driving without a license.”

“The government has recognized that it has a massive system with serious problems, and has identified steps to ameliorate the situation,” said Linton Joaquin, the National Immigration Law Center’s general counsel, one of several advocacy organizations to respond to the report with mixed reviews. “However, the steps they propose taking in the short and intermediate term are limited compared to the size of the problem.

Other advocates appreciated the review’s distinction that that “the majority of the population is characterized as low custody, or having a low propensity for violence,” and yet are housed in prison-like conditions. One of the review’s recommendations is to expand Alternatives to Detention programs so that nonviolent detainees can be housed in residential facilities or monitored with electronic ankle bracelets. Some reports indicate detainees could be housed in converted hotels – which would be a return to ICE’s roots in the 1980s.

The reviewers note that the Detention and Removal department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has “limited in-house expertise on this subject matter” and that “the establishment of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning is a critical first step,” which suggests the expansion of alternatives take a while.

Both reduction of the detainee population and legally enforceable standards were called for by the National Immigration Law Center in its July 2009 report, “A Broken System,” as essential to fixing the nation’s broken detention system, but ICE’s review makes no promises regarding these recommendations. A section of the report focuses on the shortage of detention space that is close to key arrest sites (click on the map at left to read this section of the report).

The nation’s two leading prison companies have remained quiet since the report’s release, and ICE did not say whether it had consulted CCA or Geo Group during its review. During recent conference calls with investors, CCA officials noted that in the Obama administration’s proposed 2010 budget “there was no significant changes to funding as it relates to our book of business.”

Indeed, ICE’s report made no indication that there will be a decline in immigrant detainees under the supervision of private companies that own and operate much of the detention system. According to the review, approximately 88% of the detainee population is held in 69 facilities. Fifty percent of the detained population is in 21 of these facilities – of which seven are Service Processing Centers owned by ICE and operated by the private sector; seven are dedicated Contract Detention Facilities owned and operated by the private sector; and seven are dedicated county jail facilities, with which ICE maintains intergovernmental agency service agreements.

The report calls for expert federal officials to be placed on-site to oversee detention operations at these facilities, to intercede as necessary, and to ensure that there are appropriate grievance and disciplinary processes.

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 of America got the OK to begin construction on a new facility on a 40-acre parcel in east Otay Mesa in San Diego — following last year’s suit from the ACLU against CCA and ICE for poor conditions at its San Diego Correctional Facility.

The facility could be used to house immigrant detainees, and the county predicts that construction could start within the year, although no agreement has been approved by ICE yet.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“While the company has not contracted with ICE for the new facility, its intent is to retain the agency’s business if the company, known as CCA, loses its existing ICE contract facility. The lease on the land where the San Diego Correctional Facility sits is set to expire in 2015.”

The newspaper also reported that the facility will be built in two phases, with a capacity of 1,488 beds, followed by an additional 684 beds. CCA had initially applied to build a 2,880-bed facility on the site.

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 the border, and weeded out from federal prisons and state jails. Among the four federal contracts awarded to the company since the beginning of this year is one for a 1,072-bed Nevada Southern Detention Center for the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, which will likely house people charged with misdemeanors and felonies for illegally entering the country as well as other immigrants.

More federal contracts may be on the way based on the 2010 budget proposal released this week. “There was no significant changes to funding as it relates to our book of business, and we do believe that this was the final hurdle on the contract award,” said Damon Hininger, CCA President and Chief Operating Officer.

Watch this blog for more updates  on CCA’s early read on the new leadership within Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

- Renee Feltz

The San Antonio Express News reports that protesters outside an ICE office called for the closure of the T. Don Hutto family detention center:

“Just like he promised to close Guantánamo Bay, we want him to close down Hutto with detained little children,” said Luissana Santibáñez with the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, referring to the ICE family detention center northeast of Austin.

Corrections Corporation of America owns and operates the former medium security prison as part of a contract with ICE and Williamson County, which recently renewed the agreement. Wednesday’s protest is part of an ongoing campaign by Grassroots Leadership to end immigrant family detention that will span 100 days – the first 100 days of President Obama’s term.

The White House website’s Immigration page reads, “broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a complete solution that secures our border, enforces our laws, and reaffirms our heritage as a nation of immigrants,” but makes no direct reference to immigrants in detention.

12/18/2008   Press Release:  T Don Hutto Contract Risky Business

Opponents to the T Don Hutto prison for non-criminal immigrant families and children located in Taylor, Texas, have consistently protested its basic inhumane conception and operation.  The United States’ Congress has ordered that non-criminal immigrant families awaiting disposition of requests for citizenship applications and/or asylum be detained in the “least restrictive” manner possible.  T Don Hutto is a former medium-security prison that fails this standard, they maintain.  Additionally, the lack of any governmental oversight for T Don Hutto has lead to documented abuse, including the sexual assault of a female prisoner by her guard, in the presence of her young child.

With the dramatic decline in the American economy, and a major change in the political climate, opponents point out that Williamson County Commissioners Court (WCCC) should refuse to renew its contractual role in that operation on the grounds that it is a risky business deal.  The prison is owned and run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), funded (at a cost of nearly $3 million per month) by Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), on a pass-through contract with WCCC, in which the County is paid $1 per day per prisoner for its role as “contract administrator,” potentially amounting to around $15,000 per month at capacity.

Opponents contend that CCA is no longer a strong business partner, given the almost certain decline of funds available for this costly approach; effective alternatives are available at a fraction of the cost of running T Don Hutto. (read more)

The Nov./Dec. 2008 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas features a report by Renee Feltz examining how immigration officials have teamed up with the Department of Justice, federal judges, and the nation’s largest private prison company to merge immigration and criminal policy. Many undocumented immigrants now face jail time pending their immigration hearing in civil court. The resulting surge in prosecutions is staggering: About 60,000 immigrants will face charges in fiscal year 2008. See PDF of story here: nacla_feltz

Visit NACLA’s website at www.nacla.org