FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org

LOS ANGELES — In response to the private prison industry’s celebration of the incoming Trump administration, Laura Hernández, executive director at Freedom for Immigrants, released the following statement:

“The private prison industry’s greed continues to play an integral role in expanding the abusive immigration detention and surveillance system. Private prison operators are driven not by justice, nor respect for due process or upholding human and civil rights, but by the ruthless pursuit of profit. Countless families will be separated this holiday season thanks in part to private prison operators’ inhumane financial incentive to lock up as many people for as long as possible. We need leaders who will act to end this parasitic relationship, not expand it.

“In this business, bottom lines are directly tied to the premature death, abuse, and misery of our family members and neighbors. Private prison operators have built a multi-billion dollar business off the caging and suffering of mostly Black and brown immigrants in inhumane conditions, and these corporations only stand to expand their cruelty with more detention under Trump. Americans of all political persuasions understand this is wrong and do not support for-profit prisons.

“In recent years, these corporations have sought to expand their role in so-called ‘alternatives’ to detention, securing contracts for intrusive surveillance technologies like electronic ankle shackles or other forms of compulsory monitoring, to the tune of billions of dollars. We expect private prison companies to seek to cash in even more on these so-called ‘alternatives,’ but we are not fooled. These technologies ultimately expand ICE’s reach by diversifying the ways in which our communities are incarcerated and monitored. These so-called ‘alternatives’ do not lead to our freedom, and the bottom line is that they have not actually decreased detention levels. These so-called alternatives are really an expansion of the detention and deportation dragnet.

“We demand our leaders end the government’s entanglement with private prisons and fight to curb the power of this deeply immoral and blood-soaked industry once and for all. Only then will we make progress in ensuring our immigration system is rooted in fairness, dignity and common decency for all people.”

For interview requests, please contact jmigliozzi@freedomforimmigrants.org

BACKGROUND ON PRIVATIZED IMMIGRATION DETENTION:

Detaining and surveilling immigrants is among the private prison industry’s fastest growing business sectors.

Recent earnings reports: Under the Biden administration, GEO Group and CoreCivic have cashed in on federal contracts, including for Biden’s record-high use of electronic surveillance tools for migrants, to the tune of billions of dollars.
GEO Group made more than one billion in revenue from ICE contracts alone in 2022, accounting for 44 percent of its total revenue. CoreCivic’s ICE detention contracts, meanwhile, made up 30 percent of its total revenue that same year.

Private prison companies are fundamental to understanding the decades-long expansion of the immigration detention system, and vice versa.

The industry’s foothold into immigration detention has only grown over the past several years; according to ICE data, 90 percent of all people detained by ICE are held in private detention facilities today, up from roughly 80 percent under Trump.
CoreCivic’s and GEO Group’s very first federal contracts were for detaining immigrants. In the decades since, the industry’s powerful lobby has played an integral role in entrenching and expanding the immigration detention system.

President Biden has not only failed to keep his promise to phase out all private prisons, but his own government attorneys’ have strongly defended those same prison corporations in federal courtrooms.

In addition to the more recent New Jersey case, the Biden administration early on actively fought to overturn California’s private prison ban alongside GEO Group, instead of simply dropping the case it inherited from Trump as demanded by advocates and members of Congress.

A 2021 report by Freedom for Immigrants found that immigrants subject to electronic ankle shackling by ICE endure many of the same devastating impacts on their physical and mental health that are experienced in physical prisons.

Shackling also leads to other degrading harms associated with the invisible cell walls of shackles, including social isolation and employer discrimination. Moreover, just as Black immigrants are subject to higher rates of abuse throughout the rest of the immigration detention system, Black immigrants are disproportionately subject to shackling by ICE.
9 in 10 surveyed individuals experienced harm to their physical health––ranging from discomfort to aggravating life-threatening symptoms of conditions like diabetes, and 1 in 5 experienced electric shocks.
Ankle shackling is a billion dollar industry. A government contract signed by the Trump administration awarded to Behavioral Interventions, a subsidiary of private prison giant GEO Group, is worth a staggering 2.2 billion dollars.

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Freedom for Immigrants is an immigrant-led, abolitionist organization working to end immigration incarceration by organizing with and following the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated immigrants. We’re building a future in which all people can move freely and thrive. Learn more at www.freedomforimmigrants.org/.