Monday, January 18, 2010

The 270 View Update

We have had some computer problems. Next week we should be back to posting regularly again. I will most likely be unable to answer emails for the remainder of this week.

In the mean time I want to thank Anton Flores with Alterna for forwarding this video link to us from a very recent New York Times/ACLU investigation. Everyone should be aware of this situation. It details the death of a detainee in ICE and CCA's custody at CCA's Elisabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. We have talked about this sad little operation of CCA's on the blog before and it was also discussed at the SOA Watch during the panel that I spoke at hosted by the Georgia Detention Watch. CCA's Elisabeth Detention Center is a warehouse turned into a detention center. I can not think of a more inappropriate or insulting place to put detainees. In my opinion it is a pathetic use of tax payers money. How is it that ICE can not afford to build appropriate facilities that reflect the civil (AND NOT CRIMINAL) holding of detainees? Why do we continue to spend tax dollars paying companies to profit off of holding detainees? It seems obvious (to me at least) that every dime of profit (which equals millions of dollars a year) is a waste of tax payer money. To make matters even worse companies like CCA can not even manage to run a decent facility and keep the detainees that the tax payers are entrusting them with alive (Which incidentally often results in lawsuits that cost us tax payers even more money).

The bodies are piling up in CCA and ICE facilities and yet the American people mostly remain ignorant of what is going on within are own borders at there facilities. I encourage all of this blogs readers to forward a link of this video to their friends and families. I have been asked a time or two why I care about the current immigration situation in America. Well to people like me it is unfortunately the regularity of incidents exactly like this that make us care.

the video can be found here.