Thread: Immigrant workers filling Texas prison guard positions

Prisons

Immigrant workers filling Texas prison guard positions
Some lawmakers question the practice, despite chronic staffing shortages.
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
At least 30 Texas prison guards manning posts in the employee-short state prison system are on work visas — immigrant workers from Nigeria and Mexico.

Prison officials confirmed today the use of visa workers after some eyebrows were raised about the hiring of several Nigerian visa workers at the Eastham Unit near Palestine, in northeast Texas.

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the hiring of visa workers has been long-standing policy — and legal — in the 112-prison system, which has been chronically short of correctional officers for several years. Currently, the system is 2,600 officers short.

One key lawmaker said he finds the practice "highly unacceptable" and said he plans to launch an investigation. Most police departments and law enforcement jobs in Texas require that officers be U.S. citizens, according to recruiting Web sites for police departments in Austin, Dallas and Houston and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The prison system has no such rule for correctional officers.

"What this shows me is that TDCJ is so desperate in their hiring that they're taking these folks," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston. "It raises all kinds of questions. I believe I can speak for most Texans in saying this is not what we had in mind when we discuss a proper public-safety policy."

Of the 156,000 convicts serving sentences in Texas prisons, more than 13,000 are from other countries.

"Those with work visas work mostly as correctional officers, but also in food service and transportation," Lyons said. "Traditionally, they've mostly worked in the Houston area, but they're now working in Huntsville and Palestine."

Lyons said all workers are on proper work visas, as legal immigrants. "We track them because we want to make sure they keep current on their visas," she said.

Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said he received a question from constituents concerning green-card workers working at prisons in his district near Palestine and was surprised to find out the reports were true.

It's legal," Nichols said. "But it doesn't appear to be a very good policy. ... It concerns some of my constituents. They think there's something wrong when we hire foreign workers like this."

Citing the prison system's chronic staffing shortages, he added: "It's a good example of how we're not paying our correctional officers enough."

Whitmire said he has other issues with the practice. "With all due respect to those people who are legal workers, I don't think we should have foreign nationals guarding our prisoners," he said. "I've been around the prison system for years and years, and this is the first I've ever heard that the state is doing this.

"It's not what I know about the system that worries me, it's what I don't know — and this is an example of that."

mward@statesman.com




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[b]

"It's not what I know about the system that worries me, it's what I don't know — and this is an example of that."

When you KNOW of the corruption, gangs and drug cartels and such....why would you put one of their own in there to watch over them? Don't they say it's accomplished with so much ease because they have their own in so many of these positions that you don't know who the good guy is or who the bad one is?

I would guess it's a prison for profit (private) so the greed factor kicks in
for cheap labor this is the problem through out our country.

You telling me with millions of Americans out of work they can not find citizens to fill any or all of these positions...This is a joke and so very pathetic and Americans should be screaming, especially out of work Americans who could do these jobs!!

Now that they've hired these green card holders from Nigeria and Mexico, are they going to teach them how inmates in the US are supposed to be treated, or just let them treat them like they do in their own countries, until an inmate files a lawsuit and costs the state way more than it would have cost to simply raise the pay of (American) corrections officers?

Originally Posted by oldguy

I would guess it's a prison for profit (private) so the greed factor kicks in
for cheap labor this is the problem through out our country.

I have always opposed private prisons on a number of grounds.

SOSADFORUS wrote:

You telling me with millions of Americans out of work they can not find citizens to fill any or all of these positions...

Probably not for the wages and benefits being offered.

Originally Posted by MW

SOSADFORUS wrote:

You telling me with millions of Americans out of work they can not find citizens to fill any or all of these positions...

Probably not for the wages and benefits being offered.

I have a friend who used to be a prison guard in one of west Texas's private prisons. At the time (late 90's) she was paid $1.50 above minimum wage.