A Private Prison Group Runs Texas' New Immigrant Detention Center
Texas’ newest detention center for immigrant children and mothers opened last week in Karnes City, just 54 miles outside of San Antonio. But less than a week out, the facility’s already garnering scorn from immigration attorneys in Austin.
Those attorneys – the same ones who helped shut down the troubled T. Don Hutto detention center north of Austin in 2009 – take umbrage with the fact that the Karnes facility is run by the GEO Group, a for-profit company with a less-than-impeccable reputation.
Immigration attorney Barbara Hines was part of the group that shut down the Hutto facility. She's ready to do the same with the Karnes County Residential Center as a detention facility for immigrant families, saying immigration authorities haven’t learned from previous mistakes at the now-shuttered facility.
Her office at the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Austin's School of Law is sprinkled with mementos from Hutto. The Karnes City facility, she says, has given her flashbacks.
“Hutto was run by the Corrections Corporation of America, which is a for-profit prison company like GEO. They have no training in child welfare," Hines says. "They have run these prisons or detention facilities on a prison incarceration model. If we are going to have them – and I am opposed to them – they should be run by licensed child welfare agencies."
More at http://kut.org/post/private-prison-group-runs-texas-new-immigrant-detention-center .
