AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A private prison company announced Thursday it has won a $110-million federal contract to build in Texas the first new immigrant detention center under the Trump administration.
The GEO Group said that its 1,000-bed detention facility will be in Conroe, north of Houston, and will open by the end of next year. The facility coincides with President Donald Trump’s promised expansion of immigration detention, part of a larger crackdown on immigrants in the country illegally that includes detaining people seeking asylum while they go through immigration proceedings.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement already has a record of more than 41,000 detainees.
The agency has also identified an additional 21,000 unused beds that it plans to use for detention, according to a memo reported Wednesday by the Washington Post. That memo notes that “ICE will be unable to secure additional detention capacity until funding has been identified.”
GEO, ICE’s second-largest private prison contractor, has approximately 3,000 empty beds nationwide, according to a February investor call.
Faced with a lack of funds and potentially thousands of empty beds, ICE’s move to secure a new contract with GEO surprised immigrant rights advocates.
“This is totally unprecedented,” said Silky Shaw, Co-Director of Detention Watch Network, a Washington-based non-profit fighting to end immigrant detention. “Even the most recent expansion we’ve seen has been county jails and repurposing facilities that have been shuttered.”
Trump has instructed ICE to detain all individuals suspected of violating immigration laws.
“Aliens who illegally enter the United States without inspection or admission present a significant threat to national security and public safety,” the president said in a Jan. 25 executive order asking ICE to “allocate all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate, control, or establish contracts to construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico.”
Still, Carl Takei, Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said the contract was a “sign that the Trump administration’s plans are a huge boondoggle for the private prison industry,” which already operates about 75 percent of immigrant detention facilities.
Takei said the new facility’s location was also striking, given that GEO already operates the 1,517-bed Joe Corley immigrant detention center in the same small town.
“Frankly this surprises me … This raises the question both of how much ICE is actually planning to expand its already enormous detention system and where they’re going to get the money for all this,” Takei said. “ICE has a pretty limited amount of money and they can’t fund expanding detention in 2017 unless Congress passes supplemental appropriations.”
GEO referred all questions to ICE, which did not return requests for comment.
Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Just the kind of infrastructure projects the country really needs right now. Detention centers for immigrants. The corner stone of any brave new society.
The expansion of the private gulag continues.
Is Mexico paying for it?
Who benefits financially?
Shiny new ‘detention centers’ today will become ugly soviet-bloc style Holocaust Centers later, then Jewish deportation centers then Catholic deportation centers then…
People, your members of Congress are either blind, stupid or enablers. Decide on a replacement!
Become a Precinct Committee Officer, sometimes it’s a Ward officer. You’ll meet with neighborhood Dems and get out the vote. Find good citizens willing to run for office.
Register people to vote. If you need to help people overcome the GOP-led Voter run-around help them do that.
Run for School Board. Make sure Civics is being properly taught. Think a majority of America knows how government works? Today’s 12-year olds will be voting for President in 8 years.
Run for Mayor, City Council, County Commissioner, Borough Assembly.
Get appointed to your Planning Commission. Know everything going on in your community.
Run for State Legislature or Congress. The next census is in 2020, then we’ll redraw Congressional Districts. Get rid of GERRYMANDERING! Safe GOP seats gave us such intellectual giants as Louie Gohmert and Steve King. In most cases it’s the state Legislature that draws Congressional boundaries. Make it FAIR, OPEN and HONEST!
Get rid of every stinking voter ID law in the land. The DEFAULT should be the ease of casting your legal vote.
We can finally put paid to the GOP’s fantasy of ‘running government like a business’(NOW we see why Trump had 5 bankruptcies), so let’s get people in there interested in helping Americans in general, helping govern the country, not just handing out generous tax breaks to the chosen few.
Overturn Citizens United. Money is NOT speech and Corporations are NOT people- at least not until Texas executes one.