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<\/a>\r\nNoemi Romero, who came to the U.S. illegally at age 3, was arrested\r\nin January working at a Phoenix grocery store, where she used\r\nsomeone else’s name to get the job.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nRomero, a 21-year-old who likes to draw and dance, spent the next\r\nfour months behind bars, almost half of it in a cramped cell at a\r\n1,596-bed detention center in Eloy, Arizona, run by Corrections\r\nCorp. of America. The company, with Geo Group Inc. (GEO) and other\r\nfor-profit prison operators, holds almost two-thirds of all\r\nimmigrants detained each day in federally funded prisons as they\r\nface deportation, U.S. data show.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nUnder law, taxpayers must pay to keep 34,000 people like Romero in\r\njail, at a cost of about $120 each per day, even as the number of\r\nimmigrants caught sneaking across the border has fallen by more than\r\nhalf since the past recession began.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nSince 2009, when then-Senator Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat,\r\ninserted a change into the Homeland Security Department’s annual\r\nspending bill, federal immigration officials have been placed in the\r\nunusual position of operating under a statutory quota on how many\r\npeople to hold behind bars. Congressional Republicans have been\r\ndefending it ever since.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n“People are being kept in detention — in many cases for\r\nweeks or months at a time — without consideration for the\r\nindividual circumstances,” said Denise Gilman, co-director of\r\nthe Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas law school in\r\nAustin. “This is being done at a tremendous financial cost to\r\ntaxpayers and a tremendous human cost to families.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nRemember, “anti-immigrant” laws like those \r\n\r\npassed by Arizona and Georgia<\/a>\r\naren’t about expelling immigrants from the country.\r\nThey’re \r\nfull of new misdemeanors and felonies<\/a> that let CCA lock up more people.\r\nMore “customers”, more profit!\r\n
\r\nAnd it’s even worse than that.\r\nPrisoners serve as\r\n\r\ncheap labor<\/a>, competing with local free labor.\r\n