Inside the administration’s $1 billion deal to detain Central American asylum seekers
Source: Washington Post
By Chico Harlan
http://twitter.com/chicoharlan
August 14 at 9:32 PM
DILLEY, Tex. — As Central Americans surged across the U.S. border two years ago, the Obama administration skipped the standard public bidding process and agreed to a deal that offered generous terms to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a massive detention facility for women and children seeking asylum.
The four-year, $1 billion contract — details of which have not been previously disclosed — has been a boon for CCA, which, in an unusual arrangement, gets the money regardless of how many people are detained at the facility. Critics say the government’s policy has been expensive but ineffective. Arrivals of Central American families at the border have continued unabated while court rulings have forced the administration to step back from its original approach to the border surge.
In hundreds of other detention contracts given out by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, federal payouts rise and fall in step with the percentage of beds being occupied. But in this case, CCA is paid for 100 percent capacity even if the facility is, say, half full, as it has been in recent months. An ICE spokeswoman, Jennifer Elzea, said that the contracts for the 2,400-bed facility in Dilley and one for a 532-bed family detention center in Karnes City, Tex., given to another company, are “unique” in their payment structures because they provide “a fixed monthly fee for use of the entire facility regardless of the number of residents.”
The rewards for CCA have been enormous: In 2015, the first full year in which the South Texas Family Residential Center was operating, CCA — which operates 74 facilities — made 14 percent of its revenue from that one center while recording record profit. CCA declined to specify the costs of operating the center.
....
Priscila Mosqueda contributed to this report.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/inside-the-administrations-1-billion-deal-to-detain-central-american-asylum-seekers/2016/08/14/e47f1960-5819-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html
I like the print title much better: "Windfall deal for asylum facility."
Short, and to the point.
The story is on page A1, above the fold, all the way to the right.
The comments are piling up. Here's one:
9:12 AM EDT
The Post leaves out a meaningful discussion of the Eloy-ICE IGSA, which is available at ICE's FOIA website. Anyhow, the story first was reported THREE years ago ... How Will A Small Town In Arizona Manage An ICE Facility In Texas?
It's less than two years old.
Heard on Morning Edition
The South Texas Family Residential Center sounds like it could be a pleasant apartment complex, but it's actually going to be a detention camp for female and child immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally from Central America.
Next to a state prison and a "man camp" — Texas lingo for oilfield worker housing — is where construction crews are installing modular buildings that will eventually hold 2,400 detainees, who will be technically in the custody of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Children enter a dormitory in the Artesia Family Residential Center in Artesia, N.M, in September. The center has been held up by the Obama administration as an example of the crackdown on illegal crossings from Central America. But civil rights advocates are suing the federal government, saying that lack of access to legal representation turned the center into a "deportation mill."
The day-to-day operations of the jail will be handled by Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), the nation's largest for-profit prison company. But the contract and the money to run it will go to the town of Eloy, Ariz., two states — about 931 miles — away. ... Watchdogs who monitor for-profit immigrant jails say they've never seen anything quite like it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
