The more than 60,000 people convicted of immigration crimes this year are primarily guilty of one of two things: coming into the country without authorization, or doing it again -- either "illegal entry," or "illegal "re-entry." They're in a different segment of the justice system than the pool of undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation in the civil detention system, who aren't being detained for criminal immigration violations.
...this year, more than 60 percent of all federal criminal convictions have been for immigration-related crimes, federal data show. It's a momentous shift from a decade ago, when drug violations were by far the most common federal charge.
The expanding pool of federal inmates has meant steady business for the two largest U.S. private prison corporations, particularly as populations in state prison systems have begun to decline. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America derived 30 percent of its revenue from federal contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons, a total of $546 million, according to company financial statements. The GEO Group received more than 25 percent of its revenue from those two agencies last year, a total of $384 million.
Both companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying the federal government over the past decade, and four of CCA's senior executives came from the federal Bureau of Prisons. A GEO Group board member, Norman Carlson, was a former Bureau of Prisons director.
click the link to see the rest of the story at HuffPo
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Follow the money....
Now you know the real reason why Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been so hard to get through Congress for over a decade. Yes 9/11 was a factor, but for many years now the money (and by extension - the votes) has been predominantly on the enforcement first and enforcement only side of the equation. IMHO
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