The Profit of Detention
Private $21 Million Facility Would Speed Process, Investor Says

By Josh White and Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 5, 2008

FARMVILLE, Va. -- A clearing in the woods between this small town's water treatment plant and a metal salvage yard soon will be transformed into what could become the largest immigration detention facility in the mid-Atlantic region, a $21 million project fueled by the aggressive policies some Virginia localities have adopted toward identifying illegal immigrants and handing them over to the federal government.

The 1,040-bed facility will be unique not only because it will dwarf many of Virginia's jails but also because it is a private venture aimed at capitalizing on the massive influx of detainees into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system over the past year. A small group of Richmond investors looks to reap millions of dollars in profit by building what has been described as the "mid-Atlantic hub" for ICE operations in a town just three hours south of the nation's capital.

The detention compound is billed as a remedy for the system that has been taking in hundreds of newly arrested immigrants but has struggled to deal with their cases efficiently. Instead of dispersing detainees to nine detention facilities across the state -- which has caused overcrowding, delays and additional taxpayer expense -- ICE is considering Farmville as a place it could centrally house detainees and possibly move regional administrative offices. The investors and Farmville leaders also hope to lure the immigration courtrooms now in Arlington County to the compound.

Although ICE has not guaranteed that even a single detainee will be sent to the facility, the investors plan to break ground Oct. 15 and believe they will have the facility filled to 85 percent of capacity a year from now as part of a contract between the town and ICE. There is room to expand the detention center to 2,500 beds.

"This will speed up the process of getting [detainees] out of the country," said investor Warren Coleman, a former Philip Morris executive who will run the facility.

Coleman and the other investors said the facility would provide much more humane treatment than detainees currently receive in Virginia, because the state's municipal jails are not designed to house noncriminal prisoners.

"If you look at the system that is used to hold these kinds of folks now, what kind of system is this? Jails," Ken Newsome, a spokesman and investor in the project, said at a public briefing in Farmville last month. "You're taking folks who aren't criminals and you're making a jail system house them. You're treating people who aren't criminals as criminals."

By moving detainees out of local jails, ICE would centralize its operations and bring uniformity to detention conditions. It also would move the detainees, and perhaps the courtrooms, to a rarely visited area at the heart of central Virginia. ICE officials said they were in a "robust dialogue" with Farmville but are waiting for the jail to develop.

"ICE has made no commitment to relocate anyone at this stage," said Marc Moore, assistant director for field operations with ICE's detention and removal program. "It's early to speculate what this facility will look like and to what extent it will allow us to consolidate and gain economies of scale."

Farmville is a small town of red-brick storefronts at a bend in the Appomattox River. Of its 7,000 residents, about 2,500 are students at Longwood University, a state school that has been a bulwark against the town's crumbling manufacturing sector. In the past few years, two of the area's largest companies have left, according to town officials, taking more than 400 jobs from a place with an annual per capita income of $13,552.

Not far from the quaint town center, where on a recent day college sorority women strolled by antiques shops and cafes, lies a faltering industrial park. The wooded clearing that could turn Farmville into the region's main deportation portal is just about a mile away as the crow flies, hidden down a road few residents would ever take.

Farmville is already Virginia's largest custodian of jailed illegal immigrants. Just outside town at nearby Piedmont Regional Jail, 300 such detainees are housed in a series of hangar-like cellblocks. Jail officials would not allow photographs or interviews with detainees, but a look inside the dormitories revealed men sleeping on triple bunk beds, watching TV, talking on pay phones and playing cards on a towel-draped table.

In handwritten letters to advocacy groups forwarded to The Washington Post, detainees there complain of harsh treatment by guards, inadequate medical care and rotten food. Mostly, though, they complain about having no idea about their case status or when they might be deported -- a fate most have long accepted as the only way out of jail. The new facility would give detainees access to computers, video games and exercise equipment while holding them just yards away from courtrooms where their cases can be heard.

Farmville officials think that the facility would also be a huge financial windfall for the community. Town Council member Edward Gordon, who is the medical director at Piedmont, said Farmville had a simple choice: "We had this industry or nothing."

"Yes, we might come to be known as an ICE hub, but the average person who lives in town won't know where it is," Gordon said, adding that most residents had no idea that Piedmont had been holding immigrant detainees.

Built and run by a private subcontractor, the facility will not be paid for by taxpayers. The town expects to receive about $322,000 a year in revenue by collecting $1 per detainee per day. An additional $425,000 would stream into Farmville and neighboring Prince Edward County by way of taxes and fees, buttressing Farmville's annual budget of about $24 million.

"I'm tickled to death with it," said Otto Overton, a Town Council member who is looking forward to the creation of about 200 jobs that average $48,000 a year in salary and benefits.

But it also figures to be a huge boon for the private investors, who have secured as part of the ICE contract a rate of almost $63 per detainee per day. That means that if the estimated 322,000 detainee days are achieved each year, the company could gross $20 million in federal tax dollars annually.

After salaries and expenses, the group could make millions in profit while also saving taxpayers money, since the $63 rate is lower than that of many of the state's jails. While Piedmont charges $46.25 to house ICE detainees, rates in Northern Virginia range from $64 per detainee per day in Prince William County to $113 in Alexandria.

And local jails don't always have the room to hold ICE detainees for long periods. Prince William's regional Adult Detention Center has had to send about 120 of its criminal prisoners to other facilities to make room for illegal immigrant detainees, and has had to budget about $1.8 million to process immigration-status reviews of all foreign-born suspects.

"ICE needs the beds, and a new facility will help relieve their pressure of finding a place," said Pete Meletis, superintendent of the Prince William jail. "This will be a central place for them to house people and will be a good thing."