Before these guidelines, most undocumented immigrants were sent to civil deportation proceedings. Now, any undocumented immigrant arrested at the border automatically faces criminal charges, with six months in jail for their first illegal entry into the country, and up to 20 years for their second arrest for illegal entry following deportation. This policy, the Detention Watch Network notes in a 2011 report, has played a significant role in fueling the spike in incarcerations for migrant communities. The federal Bureau of Prisons has largely outsourced these types of criminal incarcerations to the Geo Group and CCA.
Currently, Operation Streamline exists as agency policy, not statute. McCain's attempt to codify the "zero tolerance" rules as a condition for immigration reform would amount to a coup for the private prison companies, which currently manage 13 detention centers for the BOP. An amendment previously sponsored by McCain in 2010 called for $200 million to the Department of Justice to expand Operation Streamline.
McCain, the Columbia Journalism Review reported, has collected over $30,000 in campaign contributions from CCA.
Rubio, a Cuban-American with broad support among conservative activists and a regular voice in Spanish-language media, is perceived as the politician most likely to set the parameters for reform. He has been featured in national media as the de facto leader for his party in finding a middle ground with Democrats and President Obama on a pathway for citizenship.
Rubio, however, has indicated that he would favor a system that forces currently undocumented immigrants in America to wait more than 20 years before applying for citizenship, while immediately enacting a set of enforcement measures. What this means is that for some 11 million undocumented immigrants a work permit or provisional documentation would be awarded only after they pay back taxes and a penalty fee, pass background checks that may include minor offenses and meet other yet-to-be-determined requirements. This approach, though hailed as a shift away from the GOP's nativist positions of recent years, could leave millions of people in legal limbo as law enforcement is charged with a greater mandate to arrest those without documentation.
Rubio has his own ties to private prisons. In his bid for the US Senate in 2010, the Geo Group, which is based in Boca Raton, gave $33,500 to political action committees supporting his candidacy, and the company's chief executive personally donated $4,800.
In 2011, Rubio co-sponsored another McCain bill to steer taxpayer funds to Operation Streamline.
Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, director of the Enlace Institute, a prison reform advocacy group, says he believes that "Rubio's positioning on reform is linked to his ties to the private prison industry." Cervantes-Gautschi, who organized a divestment campaign against private prisons, noted, "Rubio's guideline would produce more opportunities" for those seeking to profit from immigrant detention.
To fully appreciate the scope of industry's potential influence over Rubio, one must look beyond mere campaign contributions to the man guiding the senator's every move in the immigration reform process.
Cesar Conda, Rubio's chief of staff and reportedly the architect of the senator's immigration reform outreach, maintains financial ties to the Geo Group's main lobbying firm, Navigators Global, a company he cofounded in 2003. Although Conda left the business in 2011 to lead Rubio's staff, financial disclosure forms show that Conda has received up to $100,000 from a "stock buy-out agreement" of his ownership units from the firm, an arrangement a Rubio spokesperson said "is being paid out over time."
Conda did not respond to a request for comment. Since 2011, the Geo Group has paid Conda's former firm $220,000 for lobbying services.
Payments to current and former congressional insiders are a big part of how the private prison lobby wields influence.
The two largest for-profit prison corporations currently retain six outside lobbying firms and 40 federal lobbyists, most of whom are former staffers to powerful politicians. Some are former lawmakers. Former Republican Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, who regularly antagonized any legislation he viewed as too friendly to immigrants while in office, is now at a firm called Capitol Counsel as a lobbyist for Geo Care, a Geo Group healthcare subsidiary; Vic Fazio, a former Democratic Representative from Northern California and former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is a lobbyist for CCA through his law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
In 2008, former Senator Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat from Arizona, joined Correction Corporation's board of directors.
The industry's hired guns have helped win political victories large and small.
In 2008, a bill called the Private Prison Information Act, which would require for-profit prisons to comply with most public record requests relating to the their operation of federal prisons, gained bipartisan backing and appeared poised to pass out of a House subcommittee.
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