Immigrants Regroup HALLIBURTON DETENTION CENTERS

[helderheid]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061113/lovato

<snip>
In this context, the Bush Administration's immigration policies have become increasingly militarized. Halliburton/KBR was awarded $385 million in government contracts for the construction of migrant detention centers along the US-Mexico border. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security just handed major contracts to Boeing, General Electric and other military-industrial companies for the production of drones, ground-based sensors, virtual fences and other surveillance technology for use in the Arizona desert that were originally designed for war zones like the deserts of Iraq. In May the Administration announced the deployment of 6,000 additional National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. That same month, and under the radar of most people outside the immigrant community, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, now "the largest arms-bearing branch of the U.S. government, excluding the military," according to a Cato Institute report) along with the FBI carried out hundreds of raids in neighborhoods and workplaces across the country. The ICE's "Operation Return to Sender" program captured more than 8,400 immigrants between late May and August in what DHS officials hail as "the largest operation of its kind in U.S. history." It is no coincidence that this same historical moment has witnessed the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which denies the habeas corpus rights of even legal residents who are suspected of providing "material support" to terrorist groups.
</snip>

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061113/lovato

[helderheid]

1. k

[Cleita]

2. So we are getting our own concentration camps now

to incarcerate another group of people no one cares about. Hitler in Hell must be so proud of his protege.

[helderheid]

3. can't be for the illegals. They need them for cheap labor.

[Cleita]

4. Remember the camps were there for slave labor.

Those who weren't useful were exterminated, but those who could work were used until they dropped dead.

[helderheid]

5. perhaps this belongs on the greatest

the more aware the better, eve if we're wrong

[helderheid]

6. WOW! THANKS! damn caps lock. 2 more to go

[Cleita]

7. I got the hint.

Recommendation it is.

However, these thread don't garner much interest unless there's an opportunity to bash the victims.

[helderheid]

8. Ummm shall we bash ourselves? :)

[Karenina]

21. This has been in the works

for some time now. Check the date.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0233/solomon.php

The Gatekeeper: Watch on the INS
by Alisa Solomon
Detainees Equal Dollars
The Rise in Immigrant Incarcerations drives a prison boom
August 14 - 20, 2002

It was a shaky spring for the correctional workers of Hastings, Nebraska (pop. 24,064), as the stagnation in the nation's prison population and the increasingly high costs of incarceration jostled the sleepy town, some two hours' drive from Lincoln. On April 9, the 84 employees of the Hastings Correctional Center were told that the 186-bed facility would be closing at the end of June. State funds were scraping bottom, and the $2.5 million annual price tag for the prison was too big a burden to carry. "We really didn't know what we would do," says Jim Morgan, who had been working at HCC for 15 years and lives to this day in the house where he was born. "There aren't a lot of job opportunities out here, and most of us have homes and kids and couldn't even think about moving somewhere else." For two months, the workers scrambled, filling out applications at nearby meatpacking and cardboard-container plants and anticipating long hours in the unemployment office.

Then salvation came from, of all places, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Days after HCC closed as a state prison in June, it reopened as an INS detention center.
"It's a win-win," says Morgan. The INS is desperate for more beds for its ever expanding detainee population. And the state of Nebraska, collecting $65 per detainee per day from the INS, rakes in more than $1 million a year over and above the cost of running the place.

County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop."

Passaic County Jail in New Jersey learned the lucrative lesson after 9-11, as INS transfers boosted its detainee population from 40 to 386 by December 18. The INS paid $77 per day per detainee, compared to New Jersey reimbursements of $62 for state prisoners; some $3 million in INS payments poured into Passaic last year.

Now, in places like Hastings all around the country, prisons are seeking to cut such deals on a larger scale. At the end of July the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported a decline in the state prison population, reversing a decade-long trend that produced a prison-building boom across America. The only incarcerated populations sustaining reliable growth now are INS detainees and federal prisoners, many of them noncitizens. Those with an interest in keeping multitudes behind bars—whether public employees working in the prisons that expanded in the '90s, or for-profit companies that have seen their stock prices plunge in the last couple of years—are coming to regard immigrants as their redeemers.

[slaveplanet]

9. 8,400 in 90 days

Conservative estimates place the number of illegal entrants at 250,000 per year. That translates to roughly 685 entrants per day. 8400 represents just 12 1/4 days worth of illegal entrants or about 1 in 7
of all illegal entrants during that 90 day time period. Those are hardly stellar or overzealous success rates, but it does present a problem in that there is a need to house and process all those foreign nationals.

[shance]

10. Ilegal immigrants is excuse to build. These need to be stopped NOW.

n/t

[readmoreoften]

11. Wow! They captured immigrants! Like Lala's cousin Bella!

It's a good thing that the nation didn't say ILLEGAL immigrant, because green papers got nothing to do with this baby. Disappearance by the regime is equal opportunity, legal residents and illegal aliens alike.

"The ICE's "Operation Return to Sender" program captured more than 8,400 immigrants"

One of them Lalaraw's cousin Bella, a Ukrainian Jew, 30 year legal resident, gainfully employed woman. They took her and detained her with threat of deportation for a month, made her sleep on a urine-soaked floor, and denied her her heart medications...for a month. All because she....because she...oh wait! They didn't charge her with anything! I forgot they don't have to do that anymore. Terra terra and all that. No need for habeus corpus in times like these. This is a job for Superdictatorship. All that.

I feel safer already.

[mmonk]

18. Yep.

Operation return to sender is an aberration. Our good 'ol US of A is already gone. What we're all really fighting for is getting our country back. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the public sleeps with help from the corporate media.

[helderheid]

12. mornin'

[Marie26]

13. I've been saying this for awhile

Not that anyone really cares. There's a real pattern forming here, & I don't like it. Recently, police in my city began turning over illegal immigrants charged w/a crime directly to the ICE. Maybe a good idea, maybe bad. But this camp contract is also w/the ICE, and they can now also lock people away w/o any right of habeas corpus. Legal immigrants can now also be swept up & turned over to DHS w/o having any way to challenge their detention. I feel like something is going on here, and it's targeting immigrants.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2356872#2356872

[OneBlueSky]

14. maybe we don't have anything to worry about here . . .

I mean, the Halliburton/KBR contract was for, what, $385 million? . . .

well . . . based on their record in Iraq, we can pretty safely assume that about $384.5 million of that will go to overhead, administration, and profit, no? . . .

so what kind of camp can they build for a lousy half million bucks? . . .

:sarcasm:

[thingfisher]

15. It's the new growth industry

for the 21st century. And you thought the 20th century was bad! Well at least the poor who don't want to go overseas to become prison guards in the military will be able to find employmentin the domestic detention centers. Might even pay more than Wall Mart!

[OneBlueSky]

19. it's BushCo's new, innovative job creation plan . . .

either put 'em in the camps, or pay 'em to watch the people in the camps . . . either way, they're off the streets and out of your hair . . .

and just think of the JOBS! . . . :sarcasm:

[thingfisher]

20. Is this "privatization" at work?

The so called "privatization" of government has reached a fevered pitch. Can it be in anyones interest to make the building, stocking and administration of prisons a profit driven business? Oh, I mean other than the neo-con fascists who will be getting rich from it?

Hiring "private" companies to do the dirty work of the security state creates a layer of plausible denial for the government. Any "abuses" of power can be blamed on a few bad apples in the "private sector" who overstepped their authority or over-reacted in a bad situation.

[Marie26]

16. Here's what this is about - ENDGAME

"Operation Endgame" is a DHS program that seeks to detain &/or deport all "removeable aliens" and "potential terrorists" by 2012. This is a real program. They are really doing this. And since the torture law removes the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens, legal immigrants won't even have a way to protest or appeal the detention. They can be declared "enemy combatants" at Bush's discretion, & subject to military commissions, or even forms of torture while being detained in the US. It's like a hundred new potential Gitmos.

"ENDGAME: Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003-2012" - http://www.ice.gov/doclib/pi/dro/endgame.pdf

Coporations like Halliburton are getting fat contracts to build new immigrant detenion facilities as part of the "Endgame" goal:

"As Texas moves deeper into the corporate-run detention center business, immigrant advocates worry about how much public scrutiny will be possible. “I think that immigrants are definitely more exploitable than even state or federal prisoners because they often have less access to resources and they are often deported after their detention,” says Libal. “They tend to be a transient population; they tend to have language problems.”

And once new detention centers are built, it is likely that the facilities will be open for business indefinitely, private prison opponents say. “They might pitch as a way to solve some temporary need,” says Libal, “but once they build the prisons, they will always fill the beds, especially with private facilities.” He points out that prison companies usually want to sign contracts with federal agencies that guarantee a minimum number of prisoners per month, legally binding the government to supply the bodies. In Laredo, the superjail has engendered the enthusiastic bidding of five corrections outfits, including CCA and the GEO Group, which are jostling to corner the emerging borderland markets.

So far, the rise in the immigrant detention business has received little attention as the national debate splits the business community and leaves Republican ideologues arguing with pragmatists. But the Office of Detention and Removal is hard at work on what it calls the “Endgame.” For the corporations involved in immigrant detention, the endgame is the beginning of something big."

Texas Observer - http://www.newspapertree.com/view_article.sstg?c=e120c3ec3d904ce0&mc=94f439d4aec0415b

[BeHereNow]

17. Caught it, kicked it...recommend it.

BHN

Now back to FOLEYYYYYYY and RUSSSSSHHHHH...
:evilgrin: :sarcasm:

[sarcasmo]

22. Kick for the last stage of Martial Law.