For Immediate Release
Prison Divestment Campaign denounces DHS Mass Incarceration and Deportation Agenda
Friday August 5th 2011 the Department of Homeland Security announced changes to the Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, a controversial tax-funded information sharing program that incarcerates and deports huge numbers of immigrants who have not committed crimes. DHS stated that it will effectively and unilaterally terminate all Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with states, immediately imposing the program across the US regardless of any state official’s desire to opt out of the program.
While immigrants and allies have been generating more and more support on the streets, calling for an end to anti-immigrant policies and laws and for legalization, their calls have fallen on deaf ears. Instead, the private prison industry has been successfully manipulating our immigration and criminal justice systems to reap record profits for major shareholders like Wells Fargo, General Electric, Capital Group, Vanguard and other corporate finance giants.
Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, Executive Director of Enlace, stated “DHS continues to demonstrate who it listens to – NOT to the millions calling for legalization and not to taxpayers, BUT to the private prison companies and their investors who are bent on profiting from taxpayers by jailing immigrants. Over a million immigrants have been imprisoned in the last 3 years, costing taxpayers billions of dollars that should have been allocated for education, healthcare and other legitimate public needs instead of being spent on expensive cages for men, women and children.”
Enlace, in partnership with community groups and unions across the US, is part of the Prison Divestment Campaign which is calling on all public and private institutions to divest their holdings in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, America’s largest private prison corporations which profit annually from billions in taxpayer money.
Prison Industry Divestment Movement 