The High Cost of Cheap Immigration Detentions
- Edwin S. Rubenstein
- March 27, 2024
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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The first in a three-part series.
An NPG Forum Paper
by Edwin S. Rubenstein
March 2024
Illegal immigration has increased dramatically since February 2021, bringing the current estimate of illegal immigrants in the US to an estimated 14-15 million. NPG has invested significant resources to expose the problem for what it truly is – a horribly irresponsible system that simply ignores immigration laws and allows nearly everyone who desires to enter the United States to do so. What’s worse, immigration officials are now creating new programs to make it even easier for more hopeful migrants to enter and remain in the US. Negative Population Growth calls for an end to illegal immigration, accomplished by first securing the border to prevent illegal entry and then by enforcing all laws to strongly discourage illegal presence.
As part of NPG’s educational programs, we are now developing a series of Forum papers to explain how specific industries such as private prisons, agriculture, and hospitality profit from continued illegal immigration. Many readers will be shocked by the revelations within this series as so many reap millions upon millions in financial rewards because our border is so porous.
Our first entry to the new series is dedicated to the private prison system, first built in the 1980s when government-run prisons were at capacity and law enforcement was really cracking down hard on criminal activity. For a fee, these new prisons could help alleviate some of the government’s burden by housing prisoners. Built by private firms, taxpayers were spared any financial burden, and in many rural areas they provided much-needed jobs and served as a boon to the economy. Seems like a win-win situation, until you get into the details…
Early in his term President Biden signed an executive order barring the Department of Justice from renewing existing contracts with private forprofit prisons. Activists and prison reform advocates hoped this action would signal the end of private prisons in America.
Boy, were they wrong. The private prison industry is too lucrative, too hungry for new markets, and too savvy at gaming the enormous US criminal justice system, to allow itself to perish.
With future access denied to their current cash cows (for-profit-prisons) owners shifted their focus to a different niche: immigrant detention centers.
The shift toward immigrant detentions, which is now estimated to be a $3 billion industry, comes at a time when private prison companies have funneled big bucks to politicians who support border security and immigration enforcement that will increase the number of detained immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities.1
Meanwhile, policies that could potentially reduce the number of detained or incarcerated aliens – expedited deportations and a secure border wall, for example – are ignored, if not actually discouraged, by private prison companies and their lobbyists.
IN THE BEGINNING…
Complaints about private prisons are not new. They go back to the advent of the prisons themselves in the 1980s. It was the Reagan era – a time when crime rates were exploding, prison systems were overwhelmed, and trust in government was plummeting.
It was the Golden Age of privatization.
Ronald Reagan saw government as an impediment to private sector prosperity. His administration promoted privatization – the use of for-profit companies to replace (allegedly) wasteful government activities – as a means of reducing the burden.
At the federal level Amtrak, the Postal Service, and Air Traffic Control were considered to be inefficient and therefore ripe for privatization.
At the state and local level, publicly run prisons and jails were prominent privatization candidates…Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.
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Ed Rubenstein, president of ESR Research, is an experienced business researcher, financial analyst, and economics journalist. He has written extensively on federal tax policy, government waste, the Reagan legacy, and – most recently – on immigration. He is the author of two books: The Right Data (1994) and From the Empire State to the Vampire State: New York in a Downward Transition (with Herbert London). His essays on public policy have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Investor’s Business Daily, Newsday, and National Review. His TV appearances include Firing Line, Bill Moyers, McNeil-Lehr, CNBC, and Debates-Debates. Mr. Rubenstein has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins and a graduate degree in economics from Columbia University.
