\n\n\n
<\/a>\nDeportations have reached record levels under President Barack\nObama, and demand for detention facilities has increased. Starting\nin 2002, ICE had funding for 19,444 beds per year, according to an\nICE report. Today, ICE spends about $2 billion per year on almost\ntwice the number of beds.\n<\/p>\n
\nICE’s reliance on facilities like the Irwin County Detention Center\nhas put small rural towns at the center of one of today’s most\ncontentious policy arguments—how to enforce immigration law. A\nyearlong investigation by The Nation shows how much politics has\ncome to rule detention policy. Even as Georgia and Alabama passed\nharsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out\nundocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of\nInformation Act reveal that politicians from both states were\nlobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in. ICE succumbed to the\npressure, sending hundreds of detainees to the financially unstable\nfacility in Georgia that promised to detain immigrants cheaply. That\npromise came at the expense of the health, welfare and rights to due\nprocess of some 350 immigrants detained daily in Ocilla.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nMarvelous.\nPass a low to eject illegal immigrants, except it really locks up\na bunch of them, but not enough to keep Ocilla’s private prison full,\nso import a bunch of them back in as prisoners.\n<\/p>\n
\nAren’t you glad we didn’t accept a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia?\n<\/p>\n
\nOcilla and Irwin County didn’t just make that bad bet once,\nthey doubled down on it:\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\nIn 2007 the county floated $55 million in lease revenue\nbonds—which do not require taxpayer approval—to nearly\ndouble the number of beds. Theoretically, revenue from the\nadditional inmates, generated by daily, per-prisoner rates paid by\nthe federal government—would bring in profit.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut the renovated detention center, which reopened in January 2009,\ndid not make enough profit to both meet its huge biannual payments\nto bondholders and pay its bills. By the middle of 2009, the Irwin\nCounty Detention Center was running deep in the red.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nSo now they’re trying to import illegal immigrants so they can\nfarm them out (pun intended) as farm labor.\n<\/p>\n
\nAs Hazel McCranie, president of the Ocilla-Irwin Chamber of\nCommerce, put it, “You’ve got to go out and get a contract\nwith ICE. That’s your salvation.”\n<\/blockquote>\n\nTrafficking in human beings. Some salvation.\n<\/p>\n
\nRemember back in February when\n\nCCA offered 48 states to buy their prisons if they’d guarantee 90% occupancy?<\/a>\nWell, our own Senators Isakson and Chambliss were already playing that game:\n<\/p>\n
\n\n<\/a>\nOn December 9, 2010, Senator Isakson sat down with Beth Gibson,\nICE’s assistant deputy director, and Gary Mead, executive director\nfor enforcement and removal operations, along with staff from the\noffice of Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. Senator Isakson wanted\nICE to guarantee it would keep at least a hundred beds full at the\nIrwin County Detention Center.\n<\/blockquote>\n