http://www.theeagle.com/stories/080206/texas_20060802021.php

Updated 7:00 AM on Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Prisons spring up on border

By LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press

RAYMONDVILLE - Men have been working on the futuristic cluster of tent-like domes to house illegal immigrants around the clock since late June; the quest for laborers has tapped local employment centers dry.
Wednesday, less than 12 weeks after President Bush told the nation he was boosting the U.S. Border Patrol and ending the "catch and release" policy blamed on a shortage of federal detention space, 500 metal bunks are to be filled with immigrants awaiting deportation. By Sept. 26, 2,000 will be ready.
The army of workers were under a strict directive from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to complete the project quickly, and President Bush is scheduled to visit the region to talk about immigration reform on Thursday.
"This gives a whole new definition to a 'fast-track' project," JC Conner, a vice president at Utah-based Management & Training Corp., which will operate the prison, said in a statement. "ICE announced it needed 500 beds within 40 days ... and a total of 2,000 beds within 90 days" and that work was completed on time, his statement said.
The Willacy County Detention Center is one of a host of new or expanded prisons, both public and private, that ICE has commissioned for an expected rush of illegal immigrant detainees.
ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said the facility was "a significant step forward in the president's plan" to detain and deport illegal immigrants.
Before Bush's latest crackdown on illegal immigration, Mexican immigrants were driven back across the border. Illegal immigrants from elsewhere were given a notice to appear before an immigration court sometimes as far as 30 days ahead. Few showed up, prompting border sheriffs to wryly call the paperwork a "notice to disappear."
But Bush announced in May an end to the catch and release program and ordered stiffer enforcement of the border, causing a need for more detention space.
Holding non-Mexican illegal immigrants until they are deported will take bed space, as will plans to track down and remove illegal immigrants in the U.S. interior.
The Intelligence Reform bill signed in December 2004 authorized up to 40,000 new beds in immigrant detention centers nationwide by 2010. Texas has or is expecting at least 7,000.
For companies like Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison company, it could mean good business times ahead.
CCA has reportedly reached an agreement with ICE to house families being detained at the T. Don Hutto Correctional Facility in Taylor.
Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based nonprofit that tracks the prison industry, said he anticipated a "disturbing trend of nonviolent immigrants being incarcerated for profit."