FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Tom Hargis, ACLU of Texas, 773.484.7871, [email protected]

HOUSTON – In the wake of a prisoner uprising at the Willacy County Correctional Center in Raymondville, officials have announced that more than 2,000 men will be transferred to eight of the 12 other federal Bureau of Prisons privately operated facilities known as Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons. Last year, the ACLU and ACLU of Texas released an investigation of the five CAR prisons in Texas, including Willacy County Correctional Center. The report revealed that the immigrants held in these private prisons are subjected to shocking abuse and mistreatment, and the prisons’ conditions fall far below the standards set for federal prisons by the Bureau of Prisons.

The following statement can be attributed to Terri Burke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas:

“Willacy County Correctional Center represents everything that is wrong with the criminalization of immigration and the federal Bureau of Prisons’ use of private companies to operate a shadow, for-profit prison system that warehouses thousands of immigrants for violations normally handled in the civil immigration system. Putting profit before people seems to touch every facet of life at CAR prisons like Willacy. For-profit prison companies can pocket more profits by cutting corners, and in the CAR facilities in Texas we heard many heartbreaking descriptions of gross lapses in medical care. Though not surprised, we are saddened by the events in Raymondville and hope they can be a catalyst for the changes we have demanded in our report on Texas’ five CAR prisons.”

The following statement can be attributed to Carl Takei, staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project:

“Uprisings are a predictable consequence of the Bureau of Prisons turning a blind eye to the shocking mistreatment and abuse to which prisoners are subjected in its for-profit prison system for immigrants. In a report published last year, we documented that the private-prison company MTC crams the nearly 3,000 men detained at Willacy County Correctional Center—most convicted of immigration or nonviolent drug offenses—into 200-foot-long Kevlar tents. The prisoners’ overcrowded living quarters are infested by vermin, and they are given spoiled and inedible food. This is why we have called on the federal government to initiate wide-reaching reforms that will make the 13 CAR prisons in the United States more humane. The Bureau of Prisons must increase the transparency and oversight of these prisons, which today are exempt from many of the policies, rules, and regulations used in BOP-operated federal prisons.”

View a copy of Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System (June 2014): http://www.aclutx.org/2014/06/09/warehoused-and-forgotten/