Thread: Companies, communities look to benefit from enforcement

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/new ... 172405.htm

Posted on Tue, Aug. 01, 2006

Companies, communities look to benefit from enforcement

LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas - Men have been working on the futuristic cluster of tent-like domes to house illegal immigrants around the clock since late June; the quest for laborers has tapped local employment centers dry. Express delivery trucks rumble in and out with materials ordered on the fly.

Wednesday, less than 12 weeks after President Bush told the nation he was boosting the U.S. Border Patrol and ending the "catch and release" policy blamed on a shortage of federal detention space, 500 metal bunks are to be filled with immigrants awaiting deportation. By Sept. 26, 2,000 will be ready.

The army of workers were under a strict directive from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to complete the project quickly, and President Bush is scheduled to visit the region to talk about immigration reform on Thursday.

The Willacy County Detention Center is one of a host of new or expanded prisons, both public and private, that ICE has commissioned for an expected rush of illegal immigrant detainees.

Before Bush's latest crackdown on illegal immigration, Mexican immigrants were driven back across the border. Illegal immigrants from elsewhere were given a notice to appear before an immigration court sometimes as far as 30 days ahead. Few showed up, prompting border sheriffs to wryly call the paperwork a "notice to disappear."

But Bush announced in May an end to the catch and release program and ordered stiffer enforcement of the border, causing a ripe need for more detention space in South Texas.

Holding the non-Mexican illegal immigrants until they are deported will also take bed space, as will Department of Homeland Security plans to track down and remove illegal immigrants in the U.S. interior. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said last week that Salvadorans also would be detained for the first time since a two-decade-old court decision blocked them from the use of expedited removal.

The Intelligence Reform bill signed in December 2004 authorized up to 40,000 new beds in immigrant detention centers nationwide by 2010. Texas has or is expecting at least 7,000.

ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said the agency had requested funding next year for 6,700 new beds.

The Raymondville "dorm pods" will accommodate up to 2,000 detainees, and sector Border Patrol Chief Lynne Underdown said she has also been promised more space at the federally operated Port Isabel Detention Center in Bayview.

"Detention space is key to our strategy," Underdown said, praising ICE for securing contracts to quickly add detention beds. "ICE, our counterpart ... They have stepped up to the plate."

For companies like Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison company, it could mean good business times ahead.

We continue to monitor the status of immigration policy to determine the effect it may have on our business," CCA president John Ferguson told stockholders in May. "We believe there will be a significant expansion of border enforcement efforts, which should result in a substantial increase in the population of illegal detainees.

CCA has reportedly reached an agreement with ICE to house families being detained at the T. Don Hutto Correctional Facility in Taylor and is working on a 722-bed expansion for ICE detainees at a county facility it operates in Laredo.

Florida-based GEO Group Inc. in June said it is adding 576 beds to the 875-bed Val Verde Correctional Facility.

Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based nonprofit that tracks the prison industry, said he anticipated a "disturbing trend of nonviolent immigrants being incarcerated for profit."

"Private prison companies are banking on the fact that they're going to be able to get rich," he said, "whether or not it's good policy, whether or not it's good for the community," he said.

ICE's directive for speed on the Raymondville facility was emphatic, and overtime and procurement costs haven't seemed to be an issue, said Kendall Phinney, a partner with Hale Mills, the lead construction firm on the Willacy County Detention Center.

Phinney said the company had essentially been challenged to complete a 12-month project in 90 days.

"When you're taking a 12-month project and cramming it into 90 days, there's a premium you pay to do it," Phinney said.

He said extra costs included building materials for the tents, described by its manufacturer as an "engineered stress membrane structure" held together with aluminum arches that can withstand 110 mile-per-hour winds. They have been used for U.S. military in Iraq.

Each of the 10 tents will hold 200 detainees in rows of bunks separated into four rooms with drywall. Giant air conditioning vents run under the fabric ceiling. Tall barbed wire fence surrounds the complex, which neighbors a county jail and a state prison.

Contractors, subcontractors, the private prison management company and county officials are banking on the bunks staying full and on ICE coming back with orders for more. Hale Mills has 20 more acres on the site it can fill.

"The question is when it will be expanded," Phinney said.

Build it and they will come.

A picture of this would be a great screensaver