By Jason Buch
San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO — An immigration detention center to be constructed in Karnes County is being touted as part of the federal government’s effort to improve its detention system.
The 600-bed, $32 million civil detention facility is the first of its kind that’s designed to house low-risk detainees who are facing deportation.
It will feature more recreational opportunities than most Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and a medical center. Detainees also will be allowed more unescorted movement around the facility and full-contact visitation.
It “represents a significant milestone in the agency’s long-term effort to reform the immigration detention system, prioritizing the health and safety of detainees in our custody while increasing federal oversight and improving the conditions of confinement within the system,” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Brigham said.
The detention center will be a much-needed boon for Karnes County, a county of 15,000 with an unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent, County Judge Alger Kendall Jr. said, adding that’s the highest in the San Antonio area.
The unemployment rate for the entire metro area was 7.3 percent in October.
The facility will generate $15 million a year in revenue for the county, according to GEO. About $5 million of that will be in salaries and benefits for the more than 140 new GEO employees, Kendall said.
The new detention center, scheduled for completion by the end of 2011, will be built next to an existing GEO detention facility on the city’s western edge.
Built in 1998, the 679-bed high-security center takes prisoners from ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service.
“GEO has been a very good partner of the county for a number of years,” Kendall said.
The new facility is part of an ICE effort announced last year to reform its highly criticized detention program. Texas has about 3,500 low-risk detainees, and San Antonio-area facilities house more than anywhere else in the country, Brigham said.
Along with facilities tailored to low-risk detainees, the detention center’s proximity to San Antonio is supposed to allow for access to legal services, Brigham said.
“It’s really looking to meet the needs of detainees in our custody who are low risk,” she said.
Creating a new detention center for immigrants who haven’t been charged with a major crime is a start, said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of San Antonio’s Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which provides free and low-cost immigration legal services.
But it’s still costly for organizations like his to travel to Karnes City, Ryan said. Because deportation is a civil proceeding, poor detainees do not receive a court-appointed attorney. That means they have to rely on non-profit organizations with limited budgets.
“I think conditions are important, but access to council is in many ways as important,” he said.
Florida-based GEO, which operates more than a dozen prisons and detention facilities in Texas and has a regional office in San Antonio, has received its share of criticism as well.
Wednesday’s announcement came a day after the company was sued in an El Paso federal court by the family of a detainee at its facility in Pecos. Relatives of Jesus Manuel Galindo say the 32-year-old died during an epileptic seizure in the GEO facility when he was left unattended.
Last year, an appeals court upheld $42.5 million in damages against GEO won by the family of a Laredo man who was beaten to death in a Raymondville facility owned by the company, then called Wackenhut.
A GEO spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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