The news that the ICE detention center in the small town of Folkston in South Georgia is making an expansion has created a new wave of criticism by immigration advocates in Georgia, highlighting broken campaign promises by the Biden administration to end for profit prisons. Without Congress to blame – as has been the case for pretty much everything else but infrastructure in the last 12 months – the Democratic Party faces the prospect of energizing immigrant voters in November in spite of the President taking no action to curb the indiscriminate actions of Homeland Security against our community. Will the White House move on from posturing and actually make a case for our people? He can and should, though the window is closing rapidly.
On the campaign trail Biden hit high notes about eliminating private prisons. On his campaign website we can still read “the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants.” Within weeks of taking office Biden makes the announcement to end future contracts to for-profit incarceration companies. The White House’s own read up says that “private prisons profiteer off of federal prisoners unless safe conditions for prisoners and correctional officers alike” and ordering the Attorney General to not renew DOJ’s contracts with them. I have to admit, I was fairly happy. However, people more knowledgeable than I quickly pointed out that the order does not affect ICE facilities because they are not part of the Department of Justice, but of the Depart Homeland Security (DHS).
Important to notice that in 2016, right after Trump got elected, DHS published a report arguing for further fiscalization and oversight of private prisons. While falling short of asking to end the practice, it is remarkable that DHS themselves were not asking for facility expansions. Obviously when Trump came into office that report was shelved and the timid efforts by the Obama administration to treat undocumented immigrants as human beings were thrown off the fence.
The next few years were the biggest expansion of for-profit prison lobbying in history. A total of 4.2 million dollars went from CoreCivic Inc. and GEO group, the top contributors from the prison-industrial complex, to engage with the federal government – the same groups then went big for Trump’s reelection campaign. It’s starting to seem like Biden’s quick executive order to stop federal checks going into the pockets of the prison-industrial complex had more to do with politics than with immigration policy.
Georgia has a way to make these national issues personal. In late 2020 a report about negligence in the detention center of Irwin exploded, highlighting the need to expand the referred executive order into DHS. The mobilization of immigrant families to shut down Irwin marked a turning point, as the Biden administration once again pivoted and instead of freeing the people detained they were just moved to other facilities. In the past few months I have spoken to many people that have been detained at the detention center of Stewart; it is clear that these private-run facilities are overcrowded and not serving any purpose or policy that would help the immigration system get better.
Thus we come to 2022, where all these half measures and maneuvers by the Biden administration to not provide any relief to immigrants have created the situation where instead of ending contracts with private prisons there is an attempt to expand one. The Folkston detention center, where an increase of 500% Hispanic people is directly related to the creation of the prison in 2017, is now a hot topic with the families who mobilized to shut down Irwin: they feel stabbed in the back.
The opposition to stop the expansion of Folkston have two main arguments under their belt. The first comes from the familiar players: Small county governments hungry for cash in taxes and employment opportunities for local vendors. It’s no small buck either, $10 million annual payroll and generated $265,000 in property tax revenue and fees went to Charlton County in 2018. The other argument comes from humanitarian organizations focused on palliative measures that don’t want to see people in overcrowded conditions. The argument here is pretty straightforward: if they are going to be detained anyways, they should be in the biggest facility possible.
I believe in the good faith of those arguments, as much as I believe they are missing the point. If the small county governments want investment into their communities putting a prison there is the least effective way to do so, and they should join advocates in asking for long overdue manufacturing and educational assistance to their communities. If the humanitarian organizations want to ensure living conditions for the people currently detained, then doing everything possible to reunite them with their families has to be their top priority. In particular as we have in the executive people who have for a long time argued this is one of their priorities, and there is literally nothing standing in their way to make it happen.
With the midterms approaching and the Biden-Harris team sure to make their way to Georgia to campaign multiple times it is absolutely crucial we make sure that immigrant communities feel we have a fighter on our side. While immigrant advocates could make an argument in 2020 about the necessity to get Trump out of office as the main priority, the distinction has become remarkably bland in the last year, for which we need actions from the Executive to stop the incarceration of people who made it here to contribute to society and the economy. We all want a Biden come-back from abysmal approval ratings and negative headlines. Let it kick in with relief for those whom we know are the hardest working people in the country today.