BREAKING Federal

Judge Blocks
Deportations Of
People Detained
Under Trump's
Immigration Ban

How Donald Trump Talks About

Undocumented Immigrants
January 28, 17
WASHINGTON The Justice Department plans to
stop using privately run prisons that typically house
undocumented federal inmates following a report

finding they are less safe than those that are federally
run, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said
Thursday.
Yates said the Justice Departments goal is reducing
and ultimately ending our use of privately
operated prisons, according to a memo Yates issued
Thursday. The memo was first reported by The
Washington Post.
Private prisons served an important role during a
difficult period, but time has shown that they compare
poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not
provide the same level of correctional services,
programs, and resources; they do not save
substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report
by the Departments Office of Inspector General, they
do not maintain the same level of safety and security,
Yates wrote in the memo.

SAKHORN38 VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Justice Department announced that it will stop using private prisons.

Stock prices of the countrys two biggest private prison

companies Corrections Corporation of America and
GEO Group nosedived by nearly 25 percent
Thursday morning. Other big players in the industry
including Emerald Correctional Management,
Management & Training Corporation, Community

Education Centers and LaSalle Southwest Corrections

are privately held companies.
Yates announcement follows the release of a damning
report issued last week by the Justice Departments
Inspector General that found privately run prisons
incurred more safety and security incidents per capita
than comparable BOP institutions.
The private prisons currently hold about 22,000 federal
prisoners, around 12 percent of the total federal inmate
population. They mostly house undocumented males
with fewer than 7.5 years left on their sentences.
While an unexpected need may arise in the future, the
goal of the Justice Department is to ensure
consistency in safety, security and rehabilitation
services by operating its own prison facilities, Yates
wrote in a blog post Thursday.
SMART on CRIME Reforming The Criminal Justice
System for the 21st Century
August 18, 2016
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2013/08/12/sma
rt-on-crime.pdf
Courtesy of Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates
When most people think of the Justice Department, they are likely to
imagine the most visible parts of our job the law enforcement agents
who investigate crimes or the lawyers who prosecute them. But the
departments core responsibilities go beyond investigation and
prosecution. Unlike most states, the federal government puts its law
enforcement agents, criminal prosecutors, and correctional officers all
in a single department. We handle every step from the start of an
investigation to the end of a prison sentence. Our work to house and
rehabilitate individuals incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons is
an important part of our responsibility and operations, accounting for
25 percent of the departments budget every year.
The federal prison population increased by almost 800 percent between
1980 and 2013, often at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons

could accommodate in their own facilities. In an effort to manage the

rising prison population, about a decade ago, the bureau began
contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine
some federal inmates. By 2013, as both the federal prison population
and the proportion of federal prisoners in private facilities reached their
peak, the bureau was housing approximately 15 percent of its
population, or nearly 30,000 inmates, in privately operated prisons.
2013 was also the year that the Department of Justice launched its
Smart on Crime Initiative after identifying reforms that would ensure
more proportional sentences and effective use of federal resources.
Today, in part as a result of that initiative, we are experiencing
declining numbers in our prison population. We now have
approximately 195,000 inmates in bureau or private contract facilities
down from a high in 2013 of approximately 220,000. This decline in
the prison population means that we can better allocate our resources to
ensure that inmates are in the safest facilities and receiving the best
rehabilitative services services that increase their chances of becoming
contributing members of their communities when they return from
prison.
Today, I sent a memo to the Acting Director of the Bureau of Prisons
directing that, as each private prison contract reaches the end of its
term, the bureau should either decline to renew that contract or
substantially reduce its scope in a manner consistent with law and the
overall decline of the bureaus inmate population. This is the first step
in the process of reducingand ultimately endingour use of privately
operated prisons. While an unexpected need may arise in the future, the
goal of the Justice Department is to ensure consistency in safety,
security and rehabilitation services by operating its own prison facilities.
Todays memo reflects important steps that the bureau has already
taken to reduce our reliance on private prisons, including a decision
three weeks ago to end a private prison contract for approximately 1,200
beds. Taken together, these steps will reduce the private prison
population by more than half from its peak in 2013 and puts the
Department of Justice on a path to ensure that all federal inmates are
ultimately housed at bureau facilities.

Read: Full text of the new

stay halting deportations
under Trumps immigration
order
Updated by Timothy B. Lee and Dara Lind Jan 28,
2017, 9:49pm EST

Photo by Pete Marovich - Pool/Getty Images

Federal judge Ann Donnelly has handed an early

victory to the lawyers challenging President Trumps
executive order barring immigrants from several

majority-Muslim countries.
Judge Donnelly announced during an emergency
hearing Saturday night that she was granting a stay
that would prevent the government from deporting
immigrants currently detained in airports around the
country.
You can read the full text of her order below, which
does not halt the entirety of Trumps immigration
order. To read more of Voxs coverage, click here.
Darweesh-v-Trump-Order-on-EmergencyRepublicans in Congress who have criticized
Trumps immigration order An emergency court
hearing has been called to challenge Trumps
executive order Trump said his immigration order
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3437021/
Darweesh-v-Trump-Order-on-Emergency-Motionfor.pdf
Complaint against trump, judgement The court ruled on
a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of
Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq
Alshawi,
PHASING OUT OUR USE OF PRIVATE PRISONS

August 18, 2016

Courtesy of Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates Yates-PrivatePrison USA For migrants Memo follows the release of a damning
report issued last week by the Justice Departments Inspector
General that found privately run prisons
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3027966/YatesPrivate-Prison-Memo.pdf

Homeland
Security Panel
Wants To Quit
For-Profit
Immigrant
Detention
A report saying private detention will
continue was approved, but with a huge
caveat.
12/01/2016

Detained immigrants walk back to their housing units following

lunch at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
detention facility on July 30, 2010 in Florence, Arizona. The Florence
facility is run as a for-profit business by CoreCivic, the countrys
largest private prison contractor.

WASHINGTON Private prison companies

received a blessing on Thursday from a

Department of Homeland Security panel tasked
with determining whether the government
should continue operating immigrant detention
facilities as for-profit businesses. Then the
panels meeting fell apart.
Members of the Homeland Security Advisory
Council, which advises DHS Secretary Jeh
Johnson, voted on Thursday to approve a report
that said private immigrant detention will
continue, even if government-run facilities
might be preferable.
But in a surprising twist, nearly three-fourths of
the council members gave their approval with
the caveat that they disagreed with its lead
recommendation and instead want private
detention to cease. In the end, Johnson received
recommendations on how to improve private
detention and an earful from council members
and advocates on why he should abandon the
practice.
The report by a council subcommittee,
commissioned in the wake of a decision by the
Department of Justice to phase out private
facilities from the Bureau of Prisons system,
may still quash further internal challenges to
the controversial privatization of immigrant
detention as the Obama administration winds to
a close.
Fiscal considerations, combined with the need
for realistic capacity to handle sudden increases
in detention, indicate that DHSs use of private,
for-profit detention will continue, the report
reads. But it advocates expanded Immigration
and Customs Enforcement oversight of private

facilities, and other measures to enhance ICE

control, responsiveness, and sense of
accountability for daily operations at all
detention facilities.
The report includes a slew of other
recommendations, though none are required to
be implemented. The authors a group of
former law enforcement officials, advocates and
legal experts urged ICE to rely less on county
jails, to place an ICE warden in facilities the
agency doesnt run itself, and to carry out more
out more unannounced inspections of privatized
detention centers.
But it was the panels recommendation on the
widely criticized privatization of immigrant
detention that was by far the most anticipated.

No Cheaper, But With Security

Problems

The Department of Justice announced on Aug.

18 it would phase out the use of private
contractors to run Bureau of Prisons facilities,
citing a damning report by the departments
Office of Inspector General that found privatized
prisons were more likely than government-run
facilities to have security problems and didnt
necessarily save money.
While reformers hailed the decision, critics were
quick to point out that it didnt apply to the
immigrant detention centers under ICE control,
two-thirds of which are privatized. The U.S.
Marshals Service, which also routinely detains
immigrants facing prosecution for the crimes of
illegal entry and reentry, was also exempted
from DOJs August policy change. Later that

month, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh

Johnson ordered the panel to consider whether
ICE should follow the DOJ lead.
The authors appeared sympathetic to the idea,
noting that it would be preferable for ICE to run
all its own facilities if one were starting a new
detention system from scratch.
But of course we are not starting anew, the
report says. Over many decades, immigration
detention has evolved into a mixed public
private system where only 10 percent of
detainees are now in ICE-owned facilities
The remainder are run by either private
corporations or local governments.
One of the reports authors, legal scholar David
Martin, said at the council meeting that there is
need for further debate on the scale of
immigrant detention, and on alternatives such
as ankle bracelets or parole. But he said the
core question in the report was how to develop
safe and humane and effective detention thats
appropriate for the civil context.
Thats the underlying question, and the
identity of the facility owner is just a part of that
mix, Martin said, adding that government-run
facilities wouldnt solve every problem.

Overreliance On The Private

Prison Industry

There was a dissent within the report from

subcommittee member Marshall Fitz, a longtime
immigration-reform advocate and a managing
director at Emerson Collective, a social justice
advocacy organization. He wrote that he
respectfully disagreed with the conclusion that

reliance on private prisons should, or inevitably

must, continue, even though he acknowledged
changing the status quo would be difficult.
Critics of private detention agreed.
Were not being pollyannaish about this, said
Joanne Lin, American Civil Liberties Union
legislative counsel, during a public comment
period at the meeting. We know that you cant
cut off ties immediately, but a serious look
needs to focus on how to shift the overreliance
on the private prison industry.
And then the surprise: Most of the council
ended up siding with Fitz. Members asked for an
option to vote for the report endorsing its
other recommendations while also saying
they agreed with Fitzs point that private
detention should not remain as the DHS status
quo. In the end, 17 members endorsed that split
position, while five voted to approve the
recommendations without endorsing Fitzs view,
and one voted against the report.
Even as DOJ staggered forward with an uneven
policy of phasing out privatized prisons it
renewed at least two contracts since the August
decision ICE has powered ahead with
privatization.
The agency renewed a contract with CoreCivic,
the countrys largest private prison company, to
run a widely criticized family detention center in
Dilley, Texas, and entered talks with the same
company to take over a former federal prison in
Cibola County, New Mexico. ICE advanced those
plans, even as the DHS subcommittee pondered
the wisdom of using for-profit detention centers
at all.

Last month, average daily immigrant detention

topped 40,000 people well above the
minimum-bed capacity Congress has ordered
DHS to maintain.

Disastrous For Immigrants, As

Well As For American Taxpayers

The subcommittees report ran into heavy

criticism from immigrant rights defenders and
reformers, who have long pressured ICE to
abandon privatization, saying the trend
exaggerates the worst flaws of an overgrown
and excessively harsh civil detention system.
Critics often contend private companies make
their services more attractive by cutting corners
on essentials, like qualified staff, quality food, or
care for mental health and physical health.
The relationship between ICE and private
contractors has been disastrous for immigrants,
as well as for American taxpayers, who pay
more than $2 billion each year to maintain the
detention system, the Detention Watch
Network wrote a report also released on
Thursday. Although a lack of due process,
inhumane and sometimes fatally inadequate
conditions, and a woeful lack of both oversight
and transparency are endemic to the entire
system, privatization has exacerbated each of
these problems.
The Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, run by
CoreCivic, is the deadliest one in the country,
with 15 deaths since 2003, according to The
Arizona Republic. The most recent death
occurred Sunday, when Guatemalan immigrant
Raquel Caldern de Hildago was stricken with a

series of seizures.
CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger defended his
companys record in a letter to the panel that
was included in the reports index. CoreCivic
has long understood its role in the federal
immigration detention system to be a public
trust, and we embrace our accountability to
ICE, the letter reads.
The DHS panel reports index also contains
statements from several groups opposing the
privatization of immigrant detention, including
the American Civil Liberties Union and the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
Jacinta Gonzalez, an organizer with the social
justice group Mijente, said she was heartened
by the subcommittees surprise decision to pull
away from the reports core recommendation.
She called the DHS panels report extremely
alarming, saying that the Obama
administration should instead focus its attention
on releasing people who dont belong in
detention.
They understand the problems and yet their
recommendation is to give [the private prison
industry] more money? Its completely
outrageous, especially knowing that all these
problems will only get worse under a Trump
administration, Gonzalez said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/homelandsecurity-immigration-detention-forprofit_us_58406afce4b09e21702d587c?
Darweesh-v-Trump-Order-on-EmergencyMotionFull text of the new stay halting
deportations under Trumps immigration order
Updated by Timothy B. Lee and Dara Lind Jan

28, 2017,
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/34
37021/Darweesh-v-Trump-Order-on-EmergencyMotion-for.pdf