Private prison companies like the GEO Group pull in millions of dollars a year locking up immigrants in federal custody. If Congress passes draconian new immigration legislation, they stand to profit enormously.
This summer, the House Judiciary Committee passed the SAFE Act (HR 2278), a toxic measure that would transform millions of undocumented immigrants into criminals overnight. No longer a civil violation, not having papers would become a felony punishable by months or years in a US prison. The legislation would also dramatically expand the civil immigration detention system. Companies like GEO Group would reap huge profits off the changes—nearly half of all people in immigration detention are locked in private jails and prisons.
TO DOThere’s still time to stop this destructive legislation. Tell Speaker John Boehner not to bring the SAFE Act to the House floor.
TO WATCHIn our latest Prison Profiteers video, produced in partnership with the ACLU and Beyond Bars, criminal justice advocates and former inmates detail the appalling conditions at GEO Group facilities around the country.
TO READThe Nation’s Liliana Segura gives an overview of the massive scope of the crisis of companies profiting off of mass incarceration: “With 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States,” she writes, “prisons are big business.”
