We Americans love to lock people up.
As “The Economist” recently notes, the U.S. has an incarcerated population of 2.3 million, which is bigger than the entire population of individual 15 states. The rate of incarceration in the United Kingdom is one fifth of the U.S. a ninth what is is in Germany and a 12th of Japan’s (assuming comparing the U.S. with other advanced industrialized countries doesn’t defame them.)
With this as a backdrop, Virginia is about to start incarcerating even more people, but not necessarily Americans. They are foreigners who are undocumented or are here legally but have broken laws that can range from rape and murder to gambling or hoisting a brew in a public parking lot.
The newest depository for such people is in the small college town of Farmville which gained fame in the late 1950s for closing its entire school system rather than moving on with court-ordered integration. Next month a new $21 million facility operated by a private company opens to house foreign people.
The jail will house 584 immigrant detainees and eventually grow to 1,000 inmates with criminal records, some of whom will have been snagged by the federal “Secure Communities” program that uses advanced biometrics to identify foreign nationals or foreign-born individuals who might have criminal records.
But are we talking talking murder or loitering? The Web site of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency states that the program is supposed to tag only those with serious criminal records. But since 2008, according to a Texas immigration lawyer, it has been used to detain and deport thousands of undocumented workers for minor transgressions such as gambling.
The other curiosity about the jail is that its origin is as much a business opportunity for entrepreneurs as a public service. It is being built by the Richmond-based Immigration Company of America, which has no experience running prisons. The firm has operated a
taxi service to haul detained immigrants from jail to court for several years.
ICA’s executives include Richmond businessmen Ken Newsome, Warren Coleman and Russell Harper. Newsome is a prominent contributor to Republican political causes and was a major contributor to former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore. When I wrote about ICA in September, its
executives would not talk to me, referring my inquiry instead to Farmville Town Manager Gerald J. Spates — an unusual way of handling public scrutiny, to say the least.
Furthermore, the ICA alien depot has been on shaky financial ground. A year ago, banks declined to finance it, and the firm has gotten funding from the public in the form of
money received by Virginia in a 1998 settlement with four major tobacco companies.
To make up for its lack of experience ICA plans to hire away guards and other prison personnel from a state-run, regional jug a short distance away in the Farmville area. The ghost of one dead immigrant hangs over that facility, however,
In 2008, a German man named Guido R. Newbrough, an Air Force brat who had lived most of his life in the United States and resided in Northern Virginia, was picked up in a sweep of immigrants previously convicted of sex crimes. (The well-publicized effort was organized by then-attorney general Robert F. McDonnell.) After his 2002 sexual battery conviction, Newbrough served his sentence and underwent therapy, but he was arrested in the sweep
nonetheless.
He died in a state detention jail in Farmville in November 2008 of a heart ailment after complaining to guards of pain. Fellow detainees say he was thrown to the ground and placed in isolation before his death.
The Right Wing Media Network would have us believe that jails like ICA’s are needed because of the crime rampage caused by foreigners, legal or illegal. Such beliefs can only fuel the arguments of the anti-immigrant lobby.
But what are we really doing here? Arresting and detaining improperly documented bus boys? Or are they Hannibal Lecters who happen to speak Spanish? If we believe the Economist, it probably doesn’t matter because we Americans like to lock up just about anyone.
What Virginia and the United States need is comprehensive immigration reform, not “private” prisons built partly with public money by politically connected businessmen who have never run a jail before.