Shelf Life: Immorally Detained in the Immigration Raids

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Raids drum up plenty of fear among undocumented workers, their families, and their communities, and so does another much-criticized ICE initiative: the 287(g) program, which trains local police to “enforce immigration law.” ICE likes to toot its crime-stopping horn, but in Arizona’s Maricopa County, according to the Phoenix New Times (Oct. 2 and July 10, 2008), the 287(g) program basically boils down to racial profiling—“roundups of Mexicans and anybody who looks Mexican.” People are being deported for minor crimes like driving without a license or a seat belt. In North Carolina, five men were arrested for fishing without licenses and later deported, reports the Independent Weekly (Aug. 13, 2008).

ICE proudly claims that it deported 349,041 “illegal aliens” last year. That’s 60,000 more people than the agency “removed” in 2007, an increase the Washington Post (Oct. 5, 2008) attributes in part to 287(g), which has “essentially transformed police, state troopers, deputies, and jail and prison guards into part-time immigration enforcers,” the Phoenix New Times reports.

More deportations mean more detentions, and more jail cells: ICE “holds some 30,000 people on any given day,” according to Mother Jones (July-Aug. 2008), and private prison corporations are only too happy to rent out their beds. The Business of Detention (Aug. 2008), an online investigative project by Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh, documents ICE’s contracts with bigwigs like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), where business is booming. ICE pays the company significantly more—in some cases, $200 a day per detainee—than the $54 or so CCA normally charges to house federal or state prisoners.

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