A new report from the ACLU takes a deep look at Criminal Alien Requirement [CAR] prisons - privately run federal prisons designed to house people convicted of breaking immigrations laws. You might be shocked to learn how big of a business this has become. From the report:
Thanks to very deliberate choices on the part of our legal system, more immigration violations now end with prison, rather than with deportation. In Texas alone, there are five CAR prisons housing nearly 14,000 inmates convicted of immigration crimes.Nationwide, more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions initiated in fiscal year 2013 were for unlawfully crossing the border into the United States - an act that has traditionally been treated as a civil offense resulting in deportation, rather than as a criminal act resulting in incarceration in a federal prison. This is dramatically changing who enters the federal prison system. The tipping point came in 2009, when more people entered federal prison for immigration offenses than for violent, weapons, and property offenses combined - and the number has continued to rise each year since.
Comment: As NATO engages in Saber Strike rattling and more provocations, we're seeing the first signs of a military response from Russia since their pullback from the Ukrainian border. The US and friends haven't engaged in an actual war against a real military power since WWII, and one does wonder how far they're willing to go. We can probably expect more chest puffing until they can displace blame for an economic collapse or some similar event to further define 'the enemy over there.'