Beside my broth­ers and my sis­ters, I’ll proud­ly take a stand. When liberty’s in jeop­ardy, I’ll always do what’s right. I’m out here on the front­line, sleep in peace tonight. Amer­i­can sol­dier, I’m an Amer­i­can soldier…”

Members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) include Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Geo Group and 36 Arizona state legislators.

So goes the ring­tone of Ari­zona State Sen. Rus­sell Pearce’s (R‑Mesa) phone – as per­formed by Toby ​“we put a boot up your ass, it’s the Amer­i­can way” Kei­th. Sec­onds into any con­ver­sa­tion with Pearce about ille­gal immi­gra­tion, you’ll dis­cov­er that the song fits. In his mind, Pearce is an ​“Amer­i­can sol­dier” fight­ing a war that he believes threat­ens the very fiber of the nation.

“There’s been 133 nations iden­ti­fied cross­ing that bor­der. Not just Mex­i­cans, not just Hon­durans, not just El Sal­vado­ri­ans, but 133 nations. Many of those are nations of inter­est, which means that they either har­bor, aid and abet, or are some­how con­nect­ed to ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties,” says Pearce. ​“And yet they con­tin­ue to cross that bor­der. We’ve got prayer rugs that have been found down there, oth­er things that have been found down there – and yet they [the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment] con­tin­ue to do nothing.”

So Pearce decid­ed to do some­thing. He became the proud and pri­ma­ry spon­sor of S.B. 1070 – the Sup­port Our Law Enforce­ment and Safe Neigh­bor­hoods Act – signed into law by Ari­zona Gov. Jan Brew­er in April and set to take effect on July 29.

Yet the fact is, some back­ers of S.B. 1070 are wrap­ping them­selves in the flag all the way to the bank.

An In These Times inves­ti­ga­tion shows that the bill’s pro­mot­ers are as equal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to bor­der pol­i­tics as they are to pro­mot­ing the for­tunes of pri­vate prison com­pa­nies, like Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca (CCA) and Geo Group, which stand to reap sub­stan­tial prof­its as more undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents end up in jail.

Pearce and the pol­i­cy pushers

In ear­ly Decem­ber 2009 – a full month and a half before S.B. 1070 was intro­duced to the Ari­zona Sen­ate and near­ly two months before its coun­ter­part was first read in the House – Pearce for­mal­ly sub­mit­ted a ver­sion of his draft­ed leg­is­la­tion to the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC), an orga­ni­za­tion to which he and 35 oth­er Ari­zona leg­is­la­tors belong.

A 501(c)(3) non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion, ALEC bills itself as ​“the nation’s largest bipar­ti­san, indi­vid­ual mem­ber­ship asso­ci­a­tion of state leg­is­la­tors” and as a pub­lic-pri­vate leg­isla­tive part­ner­ship. As such, ALEC claims as mem­bers more than 2,000 state law­mak­ers (one-third of the nation’s total leg­is­la­tors) and more than 200 cor­po­ra­tions and spe­cial-inter­est groups.

The organization’s cur­rent cor­po­rate ros­ter includes the Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca (CCA, the nation’s largest pri­vate jail­er), the Geo Group (the nation’s sec­ond largest pri­vate jail­er), Sodex­ho Mar­riott (the nation’s lead­ing food ser­vices provider to pri­vate cor­rec­tion­al insti­tu­tions), the Koch Foun­da­tion, Exxon Mobil, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Boe­ing, Wal-Mart and Rupert Murdoch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion, to name just a few.

ALEC is com­prised of 10 task forces, each respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing ​“mod­el leg­is­la­tion,” which ALEC mem­ber law­mak­ers then spon­sor and intro­duce in their home states. This occurs despite the fact that fed­er­al tax law explic­it­ly for­bids 501(c)(3) orga­ni­za­tions such as ALEC from tak­ing part in the for­ma­tion of leg­is­la­tion. ALEC pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al boasts that each year mem­ber leg­is­la­tors typ­i­cal­ly car­ry 1,000 pieces of leg­is­la­tion back to their home states, 20 per­cent of which is passed into law.

As a tes­ta­ment to ALEC’s effi­ca­cy as a pipeline for cor­po­rate-backed leg­is­la­tion, since the pas­sage of the fed­er­al health­care over­haul pack­age in late March, leg­is­la­tors in at least 38 states have intro­duced the ALEC-craft­ed Free­dom of Choice Health Care Act (Health Care Act). Iron­i­cal­ly, giv­en the fetish Pearce and oth­er ALEC law­mak­ers have for adher­ence to fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws, the Health Care Act is mar­ket­ed as an asser­tion of the states’ sov­er­eign­ty under the Tenth Amend­ment. Inter­est­ing­ly, ALEC claims that the Health Care Act is based on an Ari­zona propo­si­tion that was defeat­ed on the bal­lot in 2008.

Pearce is an exec­u­tive mem­ber of ALEC’s Pub­lic Safe­ty and Elec­tions Task Force. The pri­vate-sec­tor exec­u­tive mem­bers of this task force include CCA, the Amer­i­can Bail Coali­tion (which is com­prised of nine of the nation’s top bail bond insurer/​bounty hunter asso­ci­a­tions), the Nation­al Beer Whole­salers Asso­ci­a­tion, the Wine and Spir­it Whole­salers Asso­ci­a­tion, the Nation­al Pawn Bro­kers Asso­ci­a­tion and Prison Fel­low­ship Min­istries. The pri­vate-sec­tor chair of the Pub­lic Safe­ty Task Force is the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion (NRA).

Although ALEC’s leg­isla­tive mem­bers far out­num­ber cor­po­rate mem­bers, a look at the group’s finances illus­trates not only the price cor­po­ra­tions are will­ing to pay for a seat at the table with state law­mak­ers, but where the group’s loy­al­ties like­ly lie. Accord­ing to ALEC’s most recent tax records, in 2008 the group report­ed a total of $6.9 mil­lion in rev­enue – $93,387 of which was brought in through leg­isla­tive mem­ber­ship dues (a two-year mem­ber­ship is avail­able to law­mak­ers for $100, or four years at $200). On the oth­er hand, ALEC received $5.6 mil­lion (all but $1.3 mil­lion of the group’s annu­al bud­get) in con­tri­bu­tions from its cor­po­rate and spe­cial-inter­est members.

Accord­ing to Michael Hough, direc­tor of ALEC’s Pub­lic Safe­ty and Elec­tions Task Force, every bill intro­duced by any mem­ber leg­is­la­tor or cor­po­ra­tion must go through a 30-day review process of approval by both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor ALEC mem­bers before it can become mod­el leg­is­la­tion. This process, Hough says, was set in motion for Pearce’s immi­gra­tion bill when he sub­mit­ted it to the Pub­lic Safe­ty and Elec­tions Task Force dur­ing the group’s Decem­ber 2009 meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Pearce denies that he sub­mit­ted the bill to ALEC for any pur­pose oth­er than to gain its endorse­ment and strength­en the legislation’s abil­i­ty to weath­er legal chal­lenges both in Ari­zona and oth­er states.

How­ev­er, ALEC does not issue endorse­ments, says Hough, but rather works with law­mak­ers in the for­ma­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of mod­el leg­is­la­tion. And, accord­ing to Hough, the mod­el leg­is­la­tion that emerged from Pearce’s ALEC task force in ear­ly Jan­u­ary is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the bill intro­duced by Pearce in the Ari­zona Leg­is­la­ture lat­er that month.

Sanc­tu­ary city ​ ‘ anar­chists’

All Ari­zona is seek­ing to do, says Pearce, is enforce cur­rent fed­er­al immi­gra­tion laws – laws that lib­er­al law­mak­ers and ​“loud­mouth anar­chist” groups in so-called ​“sanc­tu­ary cites” fla­grant­ly violate.

“It’s ille­gal to have sanc­tu­ary poli­cies in this state under fed­er­al law, but we have them all over this coun­try. I mean, L.A. and San Fran­cis­co being – if you will – the poster cities of what’s wrong with Amer­i­ca,” says Pearce.

To rem­e­dy this sit­u­a­tion, the ALEC mod­el leg­is­la­tion (“No Sanc­tu­ary Cities for Ille­gal Immi­grants Act”) and Pearce’s Ari­zona bill both fea­ture anti-sanc­tu­ary cities pro­vi­sions that pro­hib­it any munic­i­pal, coun­ty or state pol­i­cy from ham­per­ing the abil­i­ty of any gov­ern­ment agency to com­ply with fed­er­al immi­gra­tion law. The ALEC mod­el leg­is­la­tion and the Ari­zona law also both include sanc­tions aimed at those who employ ille­gal immi­grants and tougher penal­ties for human smugglers.

The Ari­zona law has drawn the most fire for its so-called ​“Breath­ing While Brown” pro­vi­sion that allows law enforce­ment offi­cers to arrest any­one whom they have prob­a­ble cause to believe may have com­mit­ted a crime – such as being in Ari­zona with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion. When the law goes into effect on July 29, any per­son in Ari­zona found to be with­out legal papers will be charged with the new state crime of ​“will­ful fail­ure to com­plete or car­ry an alien reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ment,” under Arizona’s crim­i­nal tres­pass statutes.

These new crim­i­nal offences car­ry a max­i­mum fine of $100, up to 20 days in jail (30 days for a sec­ond offense) and resti­tu­tion of jail costs. By cre­at­ing these state lev­el offens­es – and by for­bid­ding local­i­ties from ignor­ing them – Pearce’s Ari­zona law and ALEC’s mod­el leg­is­la­tion effec­tive­ly con­vert every state, coun­ty and munic­i­pal police offi­cer into an enforcer of fed­er­al immi­gra­tion law.

Accord­ing to Hough, the main dif­fer­ence between the final ver­sion of the Sup­port Our Law Enforce­ment Act as signed into law in Ari­zona and the Sanc­tu­ary Cities Act that ALEC is pro­mot­ing across the coun­try is that the ALEC leg­is­la­tion car­ries more strin­gent penal­ties under the crim­i­nal tres­pass sec­tion than the Ari­zona law.

Under the Sanc­tu­ary Cities Act’s crim­i­nal tres­pass­ing pro­vi­sion, first offences are still Class 1 mis­de­meanors, but there is no 20- to 30-day cap on incar­cer­a­tion as the final ver­sion of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 pro­vides. Addi­tion­al­ly, the Ari­zona leg­is­la­tion clas­si­fies sub­se­quent offens­es as mis­de­meanors and the Sanc­tu­ary Cities Act clas­si­fies repeat offens­es as felonies, which car­ry length­i­er terms of incarceration.

‘ Enhanced oppor­tu­ni­ties’

Ques­tions of jus­tice aside, the immi­gra­tion drag­net cre­at­ed by S.B. 1070 in Ari­zona and the Sanc­tu­ary Cities Act, will great­ly increase the num­bers of undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents who are arrest­ed and jailed. And that bodes well for the bot­tom lines of pri­vate deten­tion cor­po­ra­tions such as CCA and Geo Group. (Nei­ther Geo Group nor CCA respond­ed to repeat­ed requests for comment.)

Over the past decade, the pri­vate-prison indus­try has increas­ing­ly shift­ed its atten­tion to the bur­geon­ing fields of undoc­u­ment­ed and crim­i­nal alien deten­tion. From Jan­u­ary 2008 to April 2010, CCA spent $4.4 mil­lion lob­by­ing the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, Immi­gra­tions and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE), the Office of the Fed­er­al Deten­tion Trustee, the Office of Bud­get Man­age­ment, the Bureau of Pris­ons, and both hous­es of Con­gress. Of the 43 lob­by­ing dis­clo­sure reports CCA filed dur­ing this peri­od, only five do not express­ly state intent to mon­i­tor or influ­ence immi­gra­tion reform pol­i­cy or gain Home­land Secu­ri­ty or ICE appropriations.

Look­ing at the num­bers, it is easy to see why the pri­vate-prison indus­try is eager to expand into immi­grant deten­tions. Accord­ing to ICE Pub­lic Affairs Offi­cer Gillian Brigham, in fis­cal year 2009, ICE detained 383,524 indi­vid­u­als, with an aver­age dai­ly pris­on­er pop­u­la­tion of 32,098 spread across the nation’s 270 immi­grant deten­tion centers.

Due to the ris­ing num­bers of immi­grant deten­tions in recent years, cou­pled with the ris­ing tide of eco­nom­ic short­falls at both the state and fed­er­al lev­el (ICE report­ed a $140 mil­lion bud­get deficit for fis­cal year 2010), ICE has farmed out the oper­a­tions of many of these facil­i­ties to either coun­ty oper­a­tors under inter-gov­ern­ment ser­vice agree­ments (IGSAs) or to pri­vate-prison con­trac­tors who oper­ate the facil­i­ties on a per diem, per inmate basis.

Cur­rent­ly, sev­en of these facil­i­ties are ​“con­tract deten­tion facil­i­ties” (CDFs) owned and oper­at­ed by either CCA or Geo Group. How­ev­er, accord­ing to Brigham, ICE uses sev­er­al types of facil­i­ties for immi­grant deten­tion, includ­ing coun­ty or state-owned jails and pris­ons con­tract­ed out by ICE under IGSAs, and ​“ser­vice pro­cess­ing cen­ters,” which are facil­i­ties oper­at­ed by both fed­er­al and pri­vate deten­tion staff.

An exam­ple of one of these IGSA enter­pris­es would be the nation’s largest immi­grant deten­tion facil­i­ty, the Willa­cy Coun­ty Pro­cess­ing Cen­ter in Ray­mondville, Texas. This jail, though owned by the coun­ty, is oper­at­ed by Man­age­ment and Train­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, a Utah-based pri­vate prison man­ag­er. Con­sist­ing of sev­er­al mas­sive dome-like struc­tures, the Willa­cy ​“Tent City” can ware­house more than 3,000 immi­grant detainees await­ing depor­ta­tion at any giv­en time.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to Brigham, ICE does not keep tabs on who is oper­at­ing these deten­tion cen­ters at the state or coun­ty lev­el through IGSAs, so it is dif­fi­cult to assess how many of these facil­i­ties are run by pri­vate firms. In addi­tion, ICE is not the only fed­er­al agency to con­tract out immi­grant deten­tion beds to these cor­po­ra­tions. The deten­tion of undoc­u­ment­ed aliens, who are con­vict­ed of a crime and must serve a sen­tence before depor­ta­tion, is also farmed out to pri­vate-prison con­trac­tors through the Bureau of Pris­ons and the U.S. Mar­shals Service.

Under­stand­ably, Geo Group and CCA are opti­mistic about their industry’s future. They plan to expand oper­a­tions or fill thou­sands of deten­tion bed ​“inven­to­ry sur­plus­es” around the coun­try (includ­ing in Ari­zona) in response to what these cor­po­ra­tions refer to as ​“organ­ic growth oppor­tu­ni­ties.” The dri­vers of this growth include the increase of immi­grant deten­tions and the inabil­i­ty of the fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments to meet deten­tion needs due to bud­getary constraints.

In May, dur­ing the Geo Group’s first-quar­ter investor con­fer­ence call, a prospec­tive investor asked Geo CEO George Zoley what impact Arizona’s immi­gra­tion law might have on busi­ness. Zoley respond­ed with lev­i­ty: ​“What? They have some new leg­is­la­tion? I nev­er heard about it. I think I’m increas­ing­ly con­vinced of their need for 5,000 new beds.”

Wayne Cal­abrese, Geo Group’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, offered a more straight­for­ward appraisal.

“I can only believe that the oppor­tu­ni­ties at the fed­er­al lev­el are going to con­tin­ue at pace as a result of what’s hap­pen­ing. I think peo­ple under­stand there is still a rel­a­tive­ly low thresh­old of tol­er­ance for peo­ple com­ing across the bor­der and those laws not being enforced,” Cal­abrese said. ​“And that to me at least sug­gests there are going to be enhanced oppor­tu­ni­ties for what we do.”