Corrections Corporation tightly intertwined with ICE, says new President Damon Hininger

Immigration bureaucracy is "one of the more consistent customers"

Facility in Georgia is "all-ICE"

National press picks up problems

In an interview with the Tennessean here, Damon Hininger, newly appointed President and COO of Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, identifies the immigration bureaucracy as one of the company's bedrock businesses and points to greater integration with the federal enforcement arm.

So far this year, problems with CCA's performance in the area of immigration have been brought to life with vivid stories in the New Yorker ("The Lost Children"), the front page of the New York Times ("Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody"), and a cover story in the Nashville Scene ("Locked and Loaded").

From Hininger's interview in the Tennessean:

On the federal side, our main customers are the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a new (federal) contract out in Las Vegas, and we are getting ready to start construction of a 1,072-bed facility there — the Nevada Southern Detention Center.

If you look at the last eight years, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has probably been one of the more consistent customers we've had. They have two potential procurements for another 4,000 beds that we think they'll take some type of action on next year. It would be beds for criminal aliens — non-U.S. citizens, low security.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, our very first contract with them goes back to our company's founding in 1983. We continue to work with them and in pretty creative ways. Our facility down in Lumpkin, Georgia, in Stewart County has turned into an all-ICE facility.

It has courtrooms for immigration judges and other space for about 60 federal caseworkers who work on deportation issues. We put services on site so there's no transport required to a federal courthouse or to a federal immigration office in Atlanta. Everybody is under one roof and detainees can go through the system very quickly.

ICE is challenged on bed space all over the country, but that picture improves if you have detainees going through the system in 30 days, let's say, instead of on average 60 days.

Photo: Corrections Corporation of America