Company wants to build a mega-prison in county (San Diego Union Tribune)

Company wants to build a mega-prison in county

By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 20, 2008

The private prison company that operates a detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Otay Mesa is proposing to build a nearly 3,000-bed mega-prison nearby.
According to county records, Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America has applied for a permit to build a “secure detention facility” in two phases on a parcel of about 40 acres northwest of Alta and Lonestar roads. A portion of the latter road has yet to be constructed.
The proposed prison would have 2,880 beds and would employ 375 people, according to an application the company filed.
It would hold more than four times the number of people that the immigration agency now holds in San Diego. The agency, known as ICE, contracts with Corrections Corporation of America to house up to 700 detainees – individuals awaiting deportation or a decision in immigration cases – at the company's private San Diego Correctional Facility, which sits on land leased from the county.
A spokesman for the company said the proposed prison would not be built as part of its existing contract with ICE or as a speculative venture, but as a way of ensuring it retains the immigration agency's detention business if the company loses its existing facility. The lease on the land that the San Diego Correctional Facility sits on is set to expire by the end of 2015.
“We have an existing relationship with ICE and other federal customers, and we want to be able to maintain that relationship,” company spokesman Steven Owen said. “We want to take steps in a preventive kind of way, to be able to provide capacity and retain that relationship.”
According to the county, the company owns the parcel that the new facility would sit on, eliminating lease concerns.
Local officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they were aware of the project, but that they were not sure if ICE would be using the new prison.
The demand for immigration detention beds definitely exists in San Diego, not only due to stepped-up immigration enforcement nationwide, but also because the agency does not have as many beds as it once did at the San Diego Correctional Facility.