Paying to Be Locked Up
THE T. DON HUTTO Residential Center is a 512-bed institution that has operated in Taylor, Texas, since the mid-1990s. The word “residential” in its name and the bright pink walls inside suggest a hospitable, domestic space. The layers of chainlink fence, heavy steel doors, and slim window slits suggest something far more sinister. Although the Hutto Center has little of the mystique of America’s more infamous prisons, like Alcatraz or Rikers Island, today it is at the center of an archipelago of private prison and detention facilities run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
“Hospitable” is not a word detainees have used to describe the Hutto Center. Consider the case of three-year-old Antony Nartatez and his mother, who were kept in prisonlike conditions at Hutto, even though U.S. officials had already determined that the two would likely be persecuted if they returned to their native Guatemala. Egle Baubonyte, a 15-year-old daughter of a detained Lithuanian married to a U.S. citizen, complained of “harsh” rules at Hutto and “being closed in … one room with the same people every day” with “nothing to do.” Laura Monterrosa, a 23-year-old Salvadoran woman seeking asylum, said that a Hutto guard sexually assaulted her; she subsequently attempted suicide, and detention officials put her in solitary confinement. Martha Gonzalez said that she was forced to clean and maintain the facility, sometimes for no pay, but never for more than a dollar or two a day.
These stories might sound like snippets from last summer’s news cycle, which included reports of striking prisoners across the United States protesting, in part, the minimal wages they earn (if they earn any wages at all), and horrific tales of young children separated from their immigrant parents at U.S. borders. But Antony’s and Egle’s complaints date to the mid-2000s. Only Laura’s and Martha’s stories are from this year. Conditions in detention centers such as Hutto may have deteriorated recently, but similar problems have existed for far longer than recent reports acknowledge.
Although it now houses immigrants, Hutto, over the course of its history, has also been used as a prison—actively blurring the line between detainment and incarceration. According to the Supreme Court, detention of immigrants should not be punitive and should be limited: just long enough for officials to assess their legal right to remain in the country. Unlike a criminal defendant awaiting trial, an immigrant detainee awaiting deportation proceedings (or an asylum hearing) has not necessarily been accused of committing a crime; simply being present in the United States without documentation is not a criminal act.
Likewise, immigrant detainees have none of the basic procedural rights—to a lawyer, to confront witnesses, or to a public, speedy jury trial—that protect accused criminals from unjust or excessive punishment. Despite the legal assumption that immigrant detainees are not being punished, detention centers dole out harsh—and often illegal—treatment to legally innocent people. Beatings and other forms of assault, the separation of children from their families, sexual violence against women, and denial of medical care have persisted for years in both CCA-run private prisons and immigration detention centers. This summer, dozens of people at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington—operated by CCA’s major competitor in providing private detention beds, GEO Group—joined the nationwide prison strike by taking part in hunger strikes and work stoppages. The incarcerated were protesting their harsh punishment; the detained were objecting to being punished at all.
The contracts, corporate relationships, and procedures that CCA and GEO Group cultivated in running private prisons were all too easy to duplicate in private detention centers—never mind that the stated purposes of these two operations are fundamentally different. When we privatize functions the government hasthen set the rules governing human interaction, using profit rather than legal or human rights standards as their guidelines.
