Jailed immigrants buoy budgets
US pays sheriffs $90 per day to hold those awaiting deportation
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe Staff
February 9, 2009
NORTH DARTMOUTH - In the newest wing of Bristol County jail, exclusively for immigrants facing deportation, inmates in sunshine-yellow uniforms pass the time in a stuffy dormitory playing cards, flipping through magazines, and chatting in Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
Anxiety and boredom fill the room. "It's been 10 months," one desperate-looking man told Sheriff Thomas Hodgson in Spanish during a recent tour of the only freestanding immigrant detention center in Massachusetts. "How long do I have to wait?"
The answer isn't clear. But Hodgson, and other sheriffs across the state, are glad to have them: For each immigrant, they receive an average of $90 a day.
Bristol and other cash-strapped county jails are increasingly embracing the immigration business, capitalizing on the soaring number of foreign-born detainees and the millions of federal dollars a year paid to incarcerate them. Bristol County alone has raked in $33 million since 2001, and has used the money to transform itself into a sprawling campus with a commissary, an ambulance communications center, and a "management accountability building" for regular meetings on jail operations.
"That money is a tremendous boost for us," said Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald Jr., whose jail houses 324 immigrants, up from 44 a decade ago, bringing in $15.6 million last year. "We aggressively try to market ourselves to get as many of those inmates into our doors as we can."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/09/jailed_immigrants_buoy_budgets/?page=full
