Feds ax private prisons, review detention sites

The “other shoe” has dropped on private companies that run federal prisons and immigrant detention centers, putting the future of several Texas facilities in question.

It’s a situation that could bring financial hardship to the private prison companies and negative economic impacts to several Texas communities, but important questions have been raised about how well these facilities operate.

The Justice Department said Aug. 18 that it would phase out use of for-profit lockups for federal prisoners nationwide. The facilities grew out of a time when “tough on crime” policies brought federal prisons more inmates than they could house.

Now that pressure has slackened. Texas has five for-profit prisons that house almost 10,000 federal inmates, out of about 22,000 in private facilities nationwide. All told, there are more than 190,000 federal inmates nationwide.

But Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates said there’s more to it than declining inmate populations.

The private facilities, she said, “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”

The companies that run the private prisons have denied those claims.

Now comes that “other shoe.”

The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that it will review its use of private facilities — run by the same companies as the private prisons — to detain illegal immigrants who are awaiting immigration proceedings or removal to their home countries.

Two South Texas centers, near Karnes City and Dilley, have drawn a significant amount of attention from immigrant-rights advocates. They house women and children taken into custody on the Texas-Mexico border, primarily during a 2014 surge in illegal immigration from Central America.

Rights advocates have complained repeatedly about conditions in the Karnes City and Dilley centers.

When the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services moved in to license the centers as child care facilities and thus gain some regulatory control over those conditions, those advocates blocked the move in court.

They said the centers are prisons, not child care facilities.

The Department of Homeland Security review, due to be completed at the end of November, should shed some light on that question.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Feds ax private prisons, review detention sites."