Arizona's War on Immigrants: Operation "Streamline Taxpayer Money Into the Private Prison Industry"

[Are_grits_groceries]

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Operation "Streamline Taxpayer Money Into the Private Prison Industry"
The $67 million edifice that is the Evo DeConcini (former Arizona Attorney General) Federal Courthouse in Tucson stands as a monument to corruption.

Every weekday at 1 p.m., around 75 undocumented immigrants, freshly caught by the BP, are paraded into a cavernous courtroom on the third floor. The clinking from their manacles and leg irons echoes around the room while they are led to their seats, all of them wearing the same dirty clothes they were wearing in the desert when they were picked up by BP. More clinking as each stands when their name was called, as they each answered "presente." Then clinking again as they were taken, five at a time, to stand in front of the Judge Tom Ferraro to plead guilty, in a simultaneous "Si," for entering the country illegally.
Thus is immigration criminalized by a vulgar display of inhumanity.

The maximum sentences, as explained by the judge, are six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. After more information is imparted to them by the judge, five at a time, the migrants are asked if they signed their plea agreements, to which they all answer "Si" simultaneously. To this Judge Ferraro replies, "All plead guilty." Any who incurred legal infractions during previous stays are given more time in jail.

There is a short period after this when each of their lawyers (who are paid between $6,000 and $12,000 of US taxpayers' money per day), standing behind their immigrant "clients," make brief requests from the judge for their clients. A husband and wife asked to be sent to the same jail so that when they are released they will be together. Another asked if he could be held in Tucson so he can be near his three daughters who live there.
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The total amount of time it takes from when Judge Ferraro began calling their five names to his dismissal of them is five minutes and 17 seconds, roughly one minute and three seconds per migrant for their "trial."
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Operation Streamline was created by George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security in 2005, on the theory provided by BP that by recording migrants' illegal entries, they would be deterred from returning over the border. Since the program was launched in 2008, it has not functioned as a deterrent in any way.

Instead, it has served as a generator of millions of taxpayer dollars into Arizona’s economy. BP agents, federal marshals, criminal defense attorneys, judges and especially Arizona’s private prison industry are all on the receiving end of these funds.

Garcia told Truthout that it costs taxpayers between $20 and $22 million per month “to run this courthouse, not including lawyers or the private prison complex that locks up the immigrants.”

Many of the migrants do their time in nearby Eloy, Arizona, at the Eloy Detention Center that is operated by the private prison firm Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In addition to the Eloy Detention Center, the CCA has brought three more detention facilities to the small town, adding 1,500 new jobs. David Gonzalez, Arizona’s US marshal, said taxpayers shell out between $9 and $11 million every month to incarcerate migrants at Eloy alone.
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http://www.truthout.org/arizonas-war-immigrants59522

This is just a part of a very long article that is worth reading. The new law can fill the jails even more with gawd knows who.
No, the immigrants should not try to enter illegally. The fact is they do regard less of any should. This method justs perpetuates building more prisons, and it doesn't solve the problem of border crossings.
This method and the new law treats the symptoms with the wrong medicine IMHO. They need to address the heart of the matter. That is too hard a problem for them to consider.