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In the week after Election Day, stocks of two major private prison companies increased dramatically, this after months of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric about illegal immigration. If he follows through on some of those campaign pledges, it could bring boom times to the industry. NPR's John Burnett reports.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Go back to last spring to a town hall meeting with Donald Trump on MSNBC to hear what his presidency could mean for the confinement industry.
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DONALD TRUMP: By the way, with prisons...
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I think we're about out of time.
TRUMP: ...I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons. It seems to work a lot better.
BURNETT: Two possible categories of unauthorized immigrants who would go behind locked gates - first, the Trump campaign vowed to stop the catch and release of people who crossed the border without documents to ask for asylum. And second, as president-elect, Trump has said he wants to deport 2 to 3 million criminal aliens.
MARY SMALL: Detention is an inherent part of the machinery of deportation. And so I think that we're looking ahead at the massive expansion of our detention system.
BURNETT: Mary Small is policy director for Detention Watch Network, which opposes private prisons.
SMALL: And what we've seen over the last decade is that when the detention system grows, that's mostly through the use of private prison companies.
BURNETT: The Obama administration played red light, green light with the corrections industry. The Department of Homeland Security relies heavily on private lockups for more than 70 percent of its detainees. And recently, the agency has been signing contracts for hundreds of new detention beds. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice announced in August it wants to phase out all private prisons, including those that hold convicted immigrants. The inspector general declared them less safe and less secure than federal prisons.
But Trump's Justice Department may reconsider private prison contracts, says Michele Deitch. She follows prison issues at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
MICHELE DEITCH: This summer, the Justice Department decided to reduce its use of privatization. And I think that will certainly be looked at again under the Trump administration.
BURNETT: Asked by NPR, the two publicly traded corrections companies, GEO and CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, declined to comment on whether a Trump presidency would be good for stockholders. In emails, the two companies' spokesmen emphasized their success as private partners for a government that doesn't like to build new prisons anymore. GEO said they provide, quote, "safe, secure and humane facilities for federal detainees."
But it's been a rocky relationship at times. For-profit detention at all levels - federal, state and local - has been the target of frequent lawsuits and harsh criticism. Just to name two, in 2012, a federal judge ordered all young men out of a private youth prison in Walnut Grove, Miss., calling it a picture of horror. And last month, a lawsuit filed by the Texas county of Willacy decried the, quote, "abysmal mismanagement" of an immigrant detention center in the town of Raymondville. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons severed its contract with that private facility after inmates rioted over living conditions in 2015.
Michele Deitch at UT-Austin says what is certain under Trump is more opposition to private prisons, especially the policy of confining asylum-seekers.
DEITCH: And locking them up really is serving no public safety purpose. So yes, I would expect that lawsuits will continue, and challenges will continue to this practice of immigrant detention.
BURNETT: The nation's customs commissioner recently had some startling news from the southern border. Gil Kerlikowske said that apprehensions of illegal crossers - mainly Central Americans seeking refuge from violence, and job opportunities - can reach 2,000 people a day. Most of them don't flee. They surrender to agents. If Donald Trump embraces the prison business like a lot of people think he will, there will be no shortage of detainees.
John Burnett, NPR News, Austin.
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