Protestors denounce CCA for detaining people on immigration-related issues

Protesters gathered last Wednesday outside the Nashville headquarters of the Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest operator of private prisons, to denounce what is a significant — and controversial — part of the company’s business: the detention of people on immigration-related issues. 

"CCA exists only to profit from keeping people locked up, whether they be immigration detainees, state, federal or local prisoners,” said Alex Friedmann, a former CCA prisoner and president of the Private Corrections Institute, a group that opposes privately run prisons. “Our position is that it is morally bankrupt and it is ethically corrupt to incarcerate people for the purpose of making money, of keeping them in prison and separating them from their families.” 

The occasion was the billion-dollar company’s annual shareholders meeting. The 50 or so protesters marched outside as Friedmann, a CCA shareholder, attended the meeting, assuring the crowd before entering that he would voice their concerns. 

The Nashville-based company has become a national symbol for what many consider the troubling expansion of privately operated prisons, which stand to profit from more stringent criminal laws, as well as more active law enforcement and aggressive prosecution. 

According to an October 2010 investigation by National Public Radio, CCA is part of a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive organization composed of elected officials and major corporations angling to influence them. NPR reported that the group drafted Arizona’s infamously harsh SB 1070, which could criminalize an entire population of immigrants and bring millions into CCA’s coffers. Company executives were eager at the prospects of detaining more immigrants, which they considered an up-and-coming market, according to documents uncovered during that investigation.  

“We’re identifying how the Corrections Corporation of America is profiting off of immigrant populations,” said Katie Vasquez of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “By targeting CCA, we’re targeting issues like the criminalization of people of color, the detention of immigrant communities for minor infractions.”