Correction: Immigration Detention, Inc.

Abstract

This article addresses the influence of economic inequality on immigration detention. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains roughly 350,000 migrants each year and maintains more than 30,000 beds each day. This massive detention system raises issues of economic power and powerlessness. This article connects, for the first time, the influence of economic inequality on system-wide immigration detention policy as well as on individual detention decisions. The article begins with a description of the systemic impact that for-profit prisons have had on the federal immigration detention system, by promoting wide-scale detention. The resulting expansion of detention has led to ever-increasing profitability for the private for-profit prison sector, which allows the companies to exercise even more influence over policymakers to achieve yet higher levels of detention. The influence of wealthy private prison corporations also affects the very nature of immigration detention, leading to the use of jail-like facilities that are the product offered by the private prison industry. The article then describes the mechanisms by which economic inequality dictates the likelihood and length of detention in individual cases. The detention or release decisions made by DHS in individual cases must account for the need to keep numerous detention beds full to satisfy the contracts made with powerful private prison companies. DHS regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space full. The article presents data, obtained from immigration authorities, regarding detention and bond patterns at a specific detention center that demonstrate this point. The research finds an inverse relationship between the number of newly arriving immigrants in the detention center and the bond amounts set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During times when new arrivals were few, the amount required to be released from detention on bond was high; during times when there were many new arrivals, bond amounts were reduced or set at zero. The article also presents another way in which economic inequality affects the likelihood of detention at the individual level. Release and detention are largely controlled through the use of monetary bond requirements, which must be paid in full. The regular use of financial bonds as the exclusive mechanism for release means that those migrants who are most able to pay are most likely to be released, without regard to their likelihood of absconding or endangering the community. Wealth thus determines detention rather than an individualized determination of the necessity of depriving an individual of liberty. The article urges that the role of economic inequality in immigration detention raises troubling issues of democratic governance and the commodification of traditional governmental functions. The current system also leads to an unjustifiable redistribution ...

Justice “cost points”

“…In another context, when a person is arrested and suspected of being in the United States as an undocumented citizen, he or she is frequently transferred to federal immigration detention centers. Gilman and Romero () examined the role of monetary bond requirements for an individual's release from immigration detention centers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities regularly set bonds averaging $7,500.…”

La descapitalización de los sujetos migrantes: el caso de las mujeres mexicanas indocumentadas en Phoenix-Arizona

“…Las empresas privadas han encontrado un negocio en el arresto indefinido de migrantes indocumentado/as y aquellos que solicitan asilo. Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) y Geo Group son las empresas más grandes que el Department of Homeland Security (DHS en adelante) y el US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE en adelante) contratan para alojar, detener, vigilar y procesar migrantes para la deportación (Gilman y Romero, 2018;Gómez, Menjívar y Staples, 2017). Estas empresas tienen vínculo directo con el American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), institución conservadora que promueve, por medio de lobby político 4 , la aprobación de leyes antiinmigrante en todo el país (Gómez et al, 2017).…”

“…El barrio de Maryvale concentra a la mayor población latina de Phoenix por lo que el incremento de la vigilancia y control está direccionado a este tipo de barrios, diversas investigaciones muestran que en barrios pobres y de clase media trabajadora es común encontrar estas prácticas en comparación con suburbios de población blanca (Golash-Boza, 2019; Gilman y Romero, 2018;Zarrugh, 2019). Durante los dos primeros años de la SB1070, la competencia de la policía de tránsito y la de los sheriffs, estaba difuminada.…”

The Development of US Regimes of Disappearance: The War on Terror, Mass Incarceration, and Immigrant Deportation

“…As with prisons, immigrant detention centers require bond payments for an individual’s release while s/he awaits the appearance of the case before an immigration judge. Through an analysis of bond amounts and detention center capacity, Gilman and Romero (2018: 1) demonstrate that the Department of Homeland Security, “regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space [of the detention center] full” in order to maximize profit for the privatized detention prison sector. The parallels between prison and detention system privatization extend also to profits accumulated through costly telephone communications and food production and preparation, among other sources of revenue.…”