The government is denying due process and fairness in our communities by detaining immigrants who pose no danger and are not a flight risk to the community in inhumane and unregulated detention centers. Transferred far away from their homes and families, detainees are often denied visitation, telephone calls, access to a lawyer, medical care, and they can be subject to physical and verbal abuse. Many vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens are among those detained, without knowing how long they will be held or why they are being held. To learn more about personal stories and take action, go to www.restorefairness.org.

I'm still not quite sure I get how these prisons are financed, but I guess that's part of the problem, isn't it. I do appreciate the history here, though. It seems to me that a lot of Americans think our current system has been in place for all eternity.

I'm sorely disappointed in how Obama has handled immigration. Basically, while the popular media are ignoring it and focusing on health care, Afghanistan, and breathless assurances of the end of the recession, he has allowed the most vulnerable members of American society to languish.

It is disgusting how little concern people have even for those who are here illegally. No papers != nonhuman. Sure, we've got our laws and disparate points of view, but you can't just lock people up and watch them die. You can't separate perfectly decent people from their families and claim that it is justified by some legal abstraction.

This is a fascinating story. Disgusting, but fascinating. Thanks, Tom Barry, for your dogged reporting, even if not many people know about it.

The current immigration enforcement regimen is cruel and wasteful. What often gets lost in the discussion is that US practices stand in flagrant violation of international human rights covenants, including several ratified by the U.S.
As Tom Barry explains, the web of county jails and private prisons under ICE contract are a source of profit for those who operate them. Sheriffs and politicians from New Jersey to Arizona have bolstered their law-and-order credentials by labeling and treating detainees as criminals. Abuse is common, sometimes deadly. As ICE’s report of October 6th states: “ICE relies primarily on correctional incarceration standards ... carrying criminal incarceration policies and practices into the arena of immigration detention.” The wording is mild, but the meaning clear. Immigration detainees are serving what amounts to prison terms without judicial due process, whereas immigration detention is, by law, part of a civil, not criminal, procedure.
While President Obama’s recent announcement of an overhaul was pleasant to hear, he can go only so far without sweeping changes, by Congress, to the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The 1996 legislation facilitates deportation by casting a wide net over the types of transgressions that can trigger removal, including traffic and trivial drug offenses for which a penalty has already been levied and served. It prescribes mandatory detention in many cases, prohibitively high bond in others. The law contains no provision for protecting the children it splits from their parents, even American-born children. Immigration judges are employees of the executive branch, not the judiciary, and access to the courts is tightly restricted. Detainees have no right to counsel, only the right to hire an attorney on their nickel while remaining exposed to ICE’s fickle impediments to effective legal representation.
The paradox of the system resides in the contrast between the remarkably rigid immigration statutes on the one hand and a lawless enforcement apparatus on the other. Lawless not in the sense of sheriffs and wardens acting illegally, but in that of a glaring absence of federal regulation of the sites where aliens are held in custody. The result is an American gulag with an average daily population of 32,000. This administration appears intent on correcting some of the damage implicit in placing administrative detainees in jails and penal colonies, although it will take much time and money to untangle an entrenched system and culture of abuse. It is up to Congress to repair the laws that permitted it in the first place.

The new American Gulag? Private enterprise running activities that is in essence governmnent responsibility (law enforcement)? That is pure FASCISM!! A dark stain on the American soul. But, since the south was happy to keep slavery for their convenience, I am not surprised.

As an historian working on the history of WWII I find it stunning that we are so ignorant of the past. The French did exactly what we are doing in France to manage and hold the thousand of refugees coming there from all over Europe fleeing late '30's persecution etc. And the invading Germans turned those camps into their own concentration camps.

yes, we a gulag! yes, we are birthing concentration camps because we push the issue of imigration out of mind and out of the justice system.

What a waste of resources - peoples' lives and our tax dollars. To do what? enrichen a bunch of low life politicians and corrupt corporations. Most of these criminal aliens are not charged or guilty of serious crimes but of the desire to live reasonable life.

If anyone reading this does not fear the power and corruption of government (federal bureaucracies and local officials) then they are probably the ones supporting national government controlled health care aka ObamaCare.

If the feds are so incompetent and corrupt with these prisons, corporations criminal aliens just wait to they control the entire medical and health care delivery and payment infrastructure.

Thank you Terry Gross and Tom Barry for bringing this to light.

Re 7. The trouble here is not power and corruption of government but the government ceding power and control to the private corporate industry of incarcerating these people. This is way worse as no one has ever control or say over these private entities. At least we can vote out corrupt public officials and politicians, but we have no control over the corporate executives who fill their pockets with tax payers money. Outsourcing government tasks to private business is bad just for that reason of accountability, besides the fact that privatization always means far more expensive. We are footing the bill and these executives laugh behind our backs getting easy money.

What happened to our country. This is inhuman. We need to get this story out. Thank you

All that propoganda we heard growing up about how humane this country is.....time and again the proof is coming out to the contrary time and again.

Bring back RIGHTS now!

This is no news to us immigrants who are familiar with similar cases of non-felon immigrants who have been locked for quite a while. I was recently involved on a fund raising drive for an immigrant who was detained in one of these prisons three months ago.

This is happened; the said immigrant’s wife called the police when her car was broken into at night. When the police arrived, they spoke to the wife then reverted their attention to this guy who was standing by and speaking with and accent. The police demanded to see proof that he was in the US legally. The immigrant had been married to his American wife for three years and had two kids. They had registered their marriage with immigration services and were in the process of obtaining their papers.

The immigrant was locked up not as a suspect in car break-in but because he was suspected of being an illegal despite producing their marriage certificate. Years earlier, the immigrant had been out of status on his F1 visa (student) for one semester due to personal problems and the college refused to allow him to continue with his education the following semester. He got married to his then girl friend a few months later.

Immigration now wants him to sign documents for voluntary removal so that they can deport him to his country of origin but he is not willing to sign anything that will separate him for his family. The immigrant was fully supporting his family by working hard but his family has been forced to apply for public assistance because the wife is not able to support the family on her meager salary. The funds that we raised for him were towards his legal fees but we decided to give some of it to the family due to their dire situation before they started receiving public assistance.

I do understand need to stop illegal immigration and follow the law but I what I disagree with is how these people are treated in prison and to what purpose do tax payers benefit if his family will have to depend on welfare when the father is not there. It is the kids (who are US citizens) who will bear the brunt because they are unlikely to succeed in life if the father is deported.

Tom Barry’s article about the convergence of profits, poverty and immigration, is startling to say the least. That it took a white person to uncover these shocking facts about how impoverished, helpless Hispanic immigrants are treated by ICE and CBP is also startling. But what is most shocking is the fact that the mass detentions of hapless peasants are being used to fill the coffers of prison giants CCA and the GEO Group.
While abuse and cruelty to animals cannot be condoned, like in the Michael Vick case, we cannot turn a blind eye to the systematic abuse of humans in our penal system and pretend that it doesn’t exist when the only reason it is happening is greed.

although I do agree that all prisoners should be treated for chronic ailments i.e. diabetes, epilepsy. I don't expect that every time they get sniffles or a headache that they are "entitled" to anything. they are fortunate that they get 3 meals a day and access to showers (amenities they would not get in there home country, in jail or no). I am tired of those bleeding heart ACLU and the such crying that constitutional rights are being violated! THEY AREN'T LEGAL CITIZENS and should not be afforded ALL the rights citizens get. they get legal council (albeit appointed by government) and make no mistake, if any one of them had a legitimate claim every lawyer in the state would be lining up to defend them for there own monetary gain (I've gotten solicitations in the mail for traffic offenses) . these illegal immigrants broke the law and thus should be punished to the extent of the law, especially when they are repeat offenders. let them spend time in prison and when they get out and are deported perhaps they will spread the word and others will be discouraged. Now, consider this: you are unemployed and struggling, you and an illegal apply for the same position for which you have the same qualifications and because he's willing to work for pennies on the dollar gets the job. you and your children are now on the verge of losing everything. I venture to say your stance would change in a hurry. our government should also start going after employers who hire illegals and giving them MUCH stiffer sentences like, prison terms, loss of business license for repeat offenders and public notice that they help prevent Americans from getting a job to save themselves a few dollars. Finally, I am sure that most have hardship reasons for trying to come in but the bottom line is it is illegal and if all we did was gathered them up and sent them right back they would turn around the next day and do it again. it's passed time we get serious about these scourge. there are places in this world where they would shoot you for crossing illegally. but here in our over sympathetic country its almost tolerated because of the humanitarian issue. would I be justified in stealing a loaf of bread and gallon of milk if I told a judge I was hungry? NOT!! One last thing. I can honestly say that if I were in there position, I too would probably try enter the U.S. too.

Greg Shulz: No one is talking about the sniffles. It is beyond contemptible that you would pretend otherwise, having read, I assume, an article concerning an epileptic man who died without treatment in the purview of your government.

The "bottom line" and "the extent of the law" have changed dramatically over the course of the last few decades, and they have changed in response to the demands of private profit. That's what this article is about. The criminalization of aliens is not a matter laid out in the Constitution or ordained by god or nature. It is for the benefit of a few corporate and political opportunists. Consider your outrage in that context. You are being used for the electoral and financial gain of unprincipled hacks.

The Constitution protects people in the territory of the United States regardless of citizenship status unless otherwise specified. Everyone should recognize this. Citizenship guarantees a right to vote and to run for office, but little else. In any case, most immigrants, legally present or otherwise, pay their dues. More than two-thirds of "illegals" pay federal income tax. You'll notice that the IRS is one branch of the government that doesn't care a lick about citizenship status.

And finally, on the issue of employment, your legitimate concern is an argument in favor not of incarceration and deportation, but of regularization. That is how you level the playing field. Undocumented workers cannot pursue their fair-labor protections because they fear contact with the government. If they were allowed to work legally, they would gain fair-labor protections and cost just as much to an employer as any other worker. The scheme of incarceration, deportation, and fear that you advocate creates the employment disadvantage you're talking about.