The good people of the Phoenix New Times have done it again and provided some stellar in-depth analysis of immigration rhetoric and the role that private prison companies play in the incarceration of undocumented migrants found crossing the border.  Proving once again that you can’t talk about immigration without discussing prison privatization.

Grinding Justice: Operation Streamline Costs Millions, Tramples the Constitution, Treats Migrants Like Cattle, and Doesn’t Work

By Stephen Lemons, Thursday, Oct 21 2010

In the border town of Nogales, Sonora, where buses drop off the newly deported every few hours on the American side, almost everyone seems to have been through Operation Streamline, a U.S. Border Patrol program that aims to hit all migrants entering the United States illegally with a criminal conviction.

There’s the street peddler, Gary, selling multicolored balloons and pinwheels to the cars lining up to cross into Arizona at the main port of entry. He was on his way to San Francisco when he was caught near Sasabe and put through Streamline’s wringer.

“It was a bad experience,” he says (all the Streamline defendants interviewed in this story spoke Spanish). He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of entering the United States without permission, a conviction the Border Patrol believes operates as a deterrent to illegal immigration.  (Read more…)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Arizona, Immigration, Operation Streamline, Phoenix New Times, private prison, Privatization. Tags for this post: Arizona, Corrections Corporation of America, Operation Streamline, private prisons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.