Immigration

In a news feature entitled, "Private prison business, the most prosperous in the U.S." HISPANTV's Spanish-language Washington Correspondent, Alfredo Miranda, covers the Sep. 13, 2012 hearing held, by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, on the role of private prisons in the incarceration of immigrants and their treatment in those facilities, funded by contracts with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Read more »

Thirteen privately operated, federally funded prisons housing 23,000 alleged illegal immigrants represent an "extremely expensive and problem-plagued, second-class penal system," contends a report presented today at a briefing on Capitol Hill. Read more »

Prison reform advocates are calling for an end to private prisons that mainly hold illegal immigrants, including a Mississippi facility that erupted in a deadly riot this spring. MPB's Jeffrey Hess reports the groups claim the prisons create the conditions that contributed to the May riot that left one guard dead.

There are 13 federally funded private prisons intended mainly to hold illegal immigrations nationwide.

One is the the Adams County Correctional Facility where a May prisoner riot left a guard dead. Read more »

When Angelica Moreno’s brother died of cancer after nearly three years locked in a private prison in Mississippi, she vowed to fight so that he’d be the last to suffer such a fate. “I want to fight for every other person inside that jail,” she told me in July, weeks after her brother died. On Wednesday, Moreno joined a group of human rights and criminal justice advocates and a member of Congress for a briefing on Capitol Hill to halt the expansion of private federal prisons like the one that Moreno says killed her brother. “No other family should have to go through this.” Read more »

The unnecessary prosecution of nonviolent illegal immigrants is sending ever larger numbers to poorly managed private prisons, a coalition of advocacy groups said in a report released Thursday, calling on Congress to reject the appropriation of $25,865,000 for 1,000 new private prison beds. Read more »

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is among the California law enforcement officials who may defy a proposed state law and continue to detain arrestees who are illegal immigrants when asked to do so by federal authorities.

The Trust Act, which cleared the state Legislature on Friday, is the latest measure nationwide to push back against federal immigration policy, either by reducing or increasing enforcement. The law would prohibit local authorities from complying with federal detention requests except when a suspect has been charged with a serious or violent crime.

WASHINGTON -- Los Angeles County is spending more than $26 million a year to hold undocumented immigrants under a federal immigration enforcement initiative, individuals it would otherwise release, according to a report on Thursday. Critics say that demonstrates the high cost of the program, in which some local governments would rather not participate. Read more »

A new report finds that Los Angeles County spends $26 million a year to detain undocumented immigrants for the federal Secure Communities program.

Here’s how Secure Communities works: When local law enforcement makes any arrest, the detainees' fingerprints are sent to a federal database. If the person is deportable, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will ask local law enforcement to keep the person in detention for no more than 48 hours, until federal agents can transfer that person to one of its facilities.

Los Angeles County is spending an estimated $26 million a year to hold undocumented immigrants under the Secure Communities program, according to a report released Thursday by Justice Strategies. Secure Communities, also known as S-Comm, checks the legal status of anyone booked into a local jail and transfers those who are undocumented to ICE custody. Read more »