The L.A. Times


"At a time when local law enforcement agencies are being forced to cut budgets and freeze hiring, cities across Southern California have found a growing source of income -- immigration detention.

Roughly two-thirds of the nation's immigrant detainees are held in local jails, and the payments to cities and counties for housing them have increased as the federal government has cracked down on illegal immigrants with criminal records and outstanding deportation orders."


Gobbling Dollars

Local governments in Southern cal are gobbling up fed monies for locking up immigrants. Glendale received $260,000 last year which was triple from what they received the previous year. Alhambra doubled their federal take from 2007 with fed funding of $247,000.

Washington paid nearly $55.2 million to house detainees at 13 local jails in California in fiscal year 2008, up from $52.6 million the previous year. The U.S. is on track to spend $57 million this year. For small cities, these monies help to offset budget cutbacks. Considering the lack of care a migrant will receive in these prisons, there is a large profit margin to be made with locking up the immigrants.

Current New Yorker Dona13, from El Salvador, related her personal experiences of her imprisonment in a detainee center:


I went trough hell when I was arrested by inmigration in McAllen TX, it was horrible but I don't want to forget, there are others RIGHT NOW that are in the hell hole that I was... Something has to be done.
I spend 5 days in a room with at least 50 other women, no beds, blankets, clean water, showers or food... Their idea of a meal was a slice of bologna and 2 slices of white bread 3 times a day, they call it the cold room, and they were not kidding it was frezzing, we slept on the cement floor with lights as bright as a hospital as close to eachother as posible to try to stay warm, we were not allowed a single phone call for 5 days (more for other women there) I could not tell my Mami I was fine. They kept saying that because of "ike"; they had no way to transport us to a diferent "detention center" but every day more cars and/or buses would came in with more people.
When they finally moved us I ended up in the hospital with a really bad infection on my kidney... I was bleeding, I couldn't eat what they gave us so; for 5 straight days I ate or drank absolubly nothing...
What they did to us was not only cruel I doubt it was legal...
and that was only the first week, I was detained for 3 weeks.


Does not sound like much of that money is going for the care and humane treatment of the detainees.

Big cities are taking their cut of this bounty with Los Angeles County receiving $34.7 million for imprisoning immigrants.

Demonized human beings have become commodities to be arrested and detained for the purpose of turning a profit for local communities. There is just too much money for the federal government to stop the enforcement only policies of immigration. This blood money is a bastardized version of stimulus monies that will help keep law enforcement agencies in the black for these bad economic times.


Catering to the Need


Local police departments are converting their space to squeeze in the profitable immigrants. Santa Ana, in an effort to offset an expected 15% cut in their budget,is
converting a couple of multipurpose rooms into dorms for the immigrant detainees. Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Waters expects the move to generate an extra million in revenue.

Waiting For the Reform

While undocumented immigrants eagerly await the hope for change in the current immigration system, jailers are taking advantage of the easy dollars to be had by easily rounding up and jailing the undocumented.

"We treat [the jail] as a business," Walters said. "The cuts could have been much deeper if it weren't for the ability to raise money there."

Soon it may be hard to buy a bed at the furniture store.

The immigration agency "is inundated with detainees," Waters said. "If I had 100 more beds, they'd fill them."

Was that Waters at the Goodwill scoping out the used beds?


Advocates Speak Out


"Immigration detention is civil, not criminal," said Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "If you are holding them in the same place, that distinction is meaningless."

Even though the cities may benefit financially, the savings do not get passed along to taxpayers, he said. "We're still paying for it," he said. "It's still a waste of resources to detain people who do not need to be detained." Especially when placing ankle monitors on the detainees could save taxpayers about 90% of what it costs to currently hold the detainees in jail.


Claims That the Detention Center are Inspected


"Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the jails that house detainees for more than 72 hours -- including in Santa Ana and Lancaster -- are subject to "stringent detention standards" and undergo inspection by a contracted company. Other jails are inspected regularly by the immigration agency."

Dona13 had this to add:


After being there 3 weeks, being in the hostital the 2nd time with a miscarriage (I didn't know I was pregnant) and going into a major depretion stage an "ICE" guy came to tell me "you have an automatic extention on your status; we apologize, you may go home"
I believe the reason my extention was the fact that I didn't complain about the "health issues" the same guy had come the day after my miscarriage and asked me what had happen, I told him "I was never pregnant, it was a false alarm, that it was my fault since I was the one that refuse to eat at the other place for 5 days" that is when he volunteer to check on an extention given to Salvadoreans only...
I was one if the lucky ones.
They put you in that 1st room "the cold room" to break your spirit next step is this place where they give you plenty of food and a warm blanket (still no showers or phones) then finally they take you to the place where you are to see a judge and then send back to your country. By the time you get there you are so emotionaly and physicly destroy than when they give you the option to sing "voluntary deportation" or see a immigration judge to fight for the right to be here" most people just want to go home and sing it right away; when I refused to sing they made it very clear that I was going to be there a long long time... I blocked a lot of things out... But I want to go back and remember places, I've keep in touch with a few of the girls I met there, one is in El Salvador the other one Honduras... We spend the days talking about shoes, clothes, guys whatever would make us forget where we were, we got to the point where we didn't know if it was day or night the lights were always bright.
Posted by The Indigenous Xicano
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