The Detention Drain: How Immigration Detention Hurts New Mexico's Economy

The criminalization of immigration through policies such as the “Zero Tolerance” policy has swelled the numbers of people in U.S. detention centers. Recent reports have exposed the inhumane conditions in these centers, including those that have caused dozens of deaths. Many people have contested the very existence of these detention centers, given these abysmal conditions, and have called for investigation and a total reassessment of the mass detention of asylum seekers and immigrants. When faced with this criticism, one of the main defenses of government officials in states and counties where the centers are located is that they make economic sense. The centers, it is argued, bring revenue and jobs to areas that need them. This IPS report punctures this myth by looking into a large immigrant detention center in rural New Mexico run by CoreCivic, one of the largest private corporations running prisons and detention centers. The authors find that the economic and jobs arguments are grossly overstated for multiple reasons.