Private prisons are profiting from the immigration crackdown in partnership with law enforcement.

In Washington, the industry's lobbyists have influenced policy to secure growing numbers of federal inmates in its facilities, while encouraging Congress to increase funding for detention bedspace. Here in this southern Arizona community, private prison companies share the spoils of their business with the local government, effectively giving area law enforcement an incentive to apprehend as many undocumented immigrants as they can.

This confluence of forces has contributed to a doubling of the ranks of immigrant detainees, to about 400,000 a year. Nearly half are now held in private prisons, up from one-fourth a decade ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The two largest for-profit prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, Inc., have more than doubled their revenues from the immigrant detention business since 2005, according to securities filings.

CCA spokesman Mike Machak acknowledges that immigrant detention "has been an important part of our business since our inception," but adds that the company does not attempt to influence detention policy through its lobbying. He says the company is proud of its work and has built its reputation through "providing quality services at cost savings to our government partner."

"CCA has always worked to educate decision makers on the merits and benefits of public-private partnerships to meet their expressed need for detention space and services," Machak says. "It is CCA's longstanding policy not to draft, lobby for or in any way promote crime, sentencing or detention legislation."

GEO Group declined to comment for this report.

Americans have grown accustomed to the crackdown on illegal immigration as part of the fabric of contemporary political debate, one in which Arizona's strict enforcement posture frequently captures attention. The private prison industry has exploited the crackdown as something else: a lucrative business model.

"The policy in this country has changed from catch and release to more detention," CCA's former board chairman, William Andrews, told investors in 2006, according to the transcript of an upbeat earnings call. "That means we'll be incarcerating more illegal aliens."

The success of the industry in growing revenues through undocumented immigrant detention has in part resulted from two distinct campaigns -- one in Washington, and the other in local communities such as this one, where prisoners are housed. Rural towns and counties have eagerly embraced the arrival of immigrant prisoners for the attendant economic benefits, including tax revenues and jobs.

"The companies seized this opportunity to fill up their empty prisons, and they've used lobbyists to ensure that it keeps getting pushed in that direction," says Tanya Golash-Boza, a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas who has followed the growth of U.S. immigration enforcement and detention. "You can certainly say that if we stopped the mandatory detention of immigrants, CCA and GEO Group and these other companies would have a major financial crisis."
 
In the economic downturn that followed the terrorist attacks of 9/11, state governments -- the biggest customers for private prison beds -- were confronting budget deficits, prompting a pullback on prison expansion plans. The federal Bureau of Prisons, which had increasingly outsourced inmates to private contractors during the Clinton administration, was also in the midst of a slowdown on new construction projects. Stock prices for CCA and GEO Group, the two major publicly traded industry players, were at all-time lows.

But in Washington, the industry spotted a potential growth opportunity in the form of a sweeping reorganization of the federal government. As part of the restructuring, the Bush administration shifted responsibility for enforcing immigration law from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, an arm of the Justice Department, to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

Private prison executives recognized a fertile new market. Stepped-up enforcement on the border would yield larger numbers of undocumented immigrants bound for detention. Their companies positioned themselves to secure federal contracts to hold those immigrants in their own for-profit facilities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/private-prisons-immigration-federal-law-enforcement_n_1569219.html