I just came across this article about the business of detaining immigrants in the State of Oklahoma. Vallery Brown reports that the detention of undocumented immigrants generates millions of dollars for counties in Oklahoma.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman Carl Rusnok has indicated that most of the 293,000 non-U.S. citizens that the Obama administration has removed in the first seven months of 2010 were at some point held in a jail or immigration detention center.
On any given day ICE has 33,400 immigrants in detention. Approximately 45 percent of ICE's $5.7 billion budget is allocated to the detention and removal of non-citizens.
Again, Matthew, you reveal a terrible stubborn spot in this country -- we love to put people in jail because it generates money! And it doesn't matter, really, who we put in jail, so long as the government can come up with something that appears reasonable -- even when it's not. We can make more money by putting the ones we are jailing to work and paying taxes. That makes some sense! thanks for your great posts.
Posted by: Marc Seguinot | Aug 30, 2010 at 06:23 PM