Law

New Report Exposes Immigration Detention Contracts in South Florida

National Report Explores Widespread Use of Local Guaranteed Minimum Contracts in Detaining Immigrants. In South Florida, ICE is paying for a minimum of nearly 1,000 detention beds, whether they are used or not.

MIAMI – A new report, “Banking on Detention: Local Lockup Quotas and the Immigrant Dragnet” released today (June 11) by Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights explores and exposes the depth of local lockup quotas in immigrant detention across 15 facilities in half of ICE’s field offices. The report includes an exploration of South Florida’s guaranteed minimum contracts in both public and private facilities.

Top lines from the report:

  • Guaranteed minimum contracts with public and private prisons in South Florida encourage the detention of 950 people at any given time–and require payment either way.
  • The GEO group, owner of the Broward Detention Center in Pompano Beach, FL, is one of the two beneficiaries with a guaranteed minimum of 500 beds.

“It’s not right to have detention quotas, national or local. It impacts the persons detained and their loved ones and the taxpayers, who are footing the bill, “says Jonathan Fried, Executive Director of WeCount, a community-based organization in Homestead, FL, that represents undocumented farmworkers and families. “Is the tail wagging the dog? To what extent is our immigration policy determined by the profit interests of the private prison corporations and local law enforcement agencies that house so many immigrant detainees in the system?”

krome detention center
Krome Detention Center

“The detention bed quota is a mistaken policy that has been guiding ICE in the wrong direction and enriching private companies like the GEO Group. Mandating an arbitrary detention bed quota and wasting valuable tax money to pay for them, whether they are used or not, is morally and economically wrong,” says Isabel Vinent, Deputy Director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“The detention of immigrants under the Obama Administration has become a financial market, where people are negotiated on for profit at huge moral and financial cost,” said Silky Shah, Co-Director of Detention Watch Network. “Local guaranteed minimum contracts with for-profit corporations and even local governments have created and driven this market: all at a huge expense to families detained arbitrarily and to taxpayers footing the bill.”

Other major areas with local quotas include: Los Angeles, San Antonio, Phoenix, Seattle, Houston, San Diego, Buffalo, New Orleans, and Newark.

See the executive summary here: 

http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/detentionwatchnetwork.org/files/dwn_banking_on_detention_executive_summary.pdf

See the full report here: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/bankingondetention

 

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The SFLCN.com Team provides news and information for the Caribbean-American community in South Florida and beyond.

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