Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

July 7, 2016

Hidden Camera Exposes Operation Streamline in Tucson's Kangaroo Court


Protest of Operation Streamline in Tucson. The transportation contract
for detained migrants was issued to G4S (formerly Wackenhut) adding
another layer to the profiteering from the incarceration of migrants.




Operation Streamline fast tracks migrants to prisons for 

profit

Operation Streamline is just one part of the U.S. covert operations targeting migrants on the border, supplying weapons to drug cartels and destabilizing Mexico.

Article by Brenda Norrell
Censored News

This hidden camera footage from Tucson's court exposes the mass deportation that is rarely-seen. These mass deportation trials send hundreds of refugees to private prisons in less than an hour. 

This rare footage of Operation Streamline was at a trial disrupted in an act of civil disobedience by local clergy members. It was filmed on Dec. 14, 2015 in Tucson, Arizona.

The video exposes Operation Streamline, which benefits private prisons in the U.S. with mass incarceration of migrants. The two largest U.S. private-prison companies profiteering from migrant incarcerations are Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, Inc. (formerly Wackenhut.)

Operation Streamline is just one part of the U.S. covert operations targeting migrants on the border, supplying weapons to drug cartels and destabilizing Mexico.

Operation Streamline began on the border of west Texas and Mexico, during the Bush administration in 2005. It was the same time and place -- the Texas border in 2005 -- where the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) began supplying assault weapons to drug cartels in Mexico, under the guise of tracking those weapons. Project Gunrunner began in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, according to the Dept. of Justice. The gunwalking continued, based in Tucson, under the names of Operation Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious. The assault weapons were used in the murder of an unknown number of people, including two U.S. federal officers, an ICE and a Border Patrol agent.

Now, along with private prisons, there are two global corporations on the border profiteering from the border hysteria. G4S (formerly Wackenhut) based in London, has the U.S. contract for the transportation of migrants on the Arizona border. (Wackenhut split into Wackenhut Transportation and GEO private prisons for maximum profits from migrant misery. Wackenhut Transporation was then purchased by G4S, which is documented violating human rights around the world with the abuse of prisoners.)

Israeli arms dealer Elbit Systems has the U.S. contract for surveillance and the construction of spy towers on the Arizona border. Elbit is now targeting Tohono O'odham burial places in Arizona with the construction of these towers. Elbit is protested around the world for Apartheid security in Palestine. Elbit's drones carry out attacks on Palestinians.

Watch full episode of video at:
http://mediaroots.org/the-empires-war-on-the-border/


Operation Streamline Facts
• Operation Streamline is a program of en masse, fast-track criminal prosecution of
immigrants in federal courts along most sectors of the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Operation Streamline began in Del Rio, Texas, on December 16, 2005 and was expanded to
Tucson in 2008. At the height of the program, Streamline was operating in six of nine
sectors on the southern U.S. border with Mexico, in every state on that border but California.
It continues to operate in the Tucson, Del Rio, and Laredo sectors today.
• Charges include 8 U.S.C. § 1325 (illegal entry) and/or 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (reentry after
deportation), depending on jurisdiction. The District of Arizona leads the nation in
prosecutions for reentry after deportation; the Southern and then Western Districts of Texas
lead in prosecutions for illegal entry.
• In Tucson, up to 70 people appear in court for the first time, plead guilty, and are sentenced
in one mass court appearance lasting two hours or less. All of the defendants receive
sentences of between 30 and 180 days in prison. Defendants are shackled during court
proceedings.
• Operation Streamline defendants serve their sentences in publicly and privately operated
federal prisons throughout the country. Frequently they are sent to a prison located far from
their U.S. family and community.
• Personal belongings of Operation Streamline defendants, such as money and identification
documents, are routinely confiscated by the Border Patrol upon arrest. Frequently these
belongings are never returned. Migrants commonly find themselves deported after serving a
prison sentence and stranded in a border city without their most critical possessions.
• Operation Streamline proceedings are rife with violations of defendants’ legal rights, as well
as abridgement of ethical rules and professional norms established for the legal profession.
• Streamlined people bear lifelong criminal records and severely damaged chances of ever
being able to return to the United States with valid immigration status.

The Criminalization of Migration
• Statutes criminalizing illegal entry and re-entry were passed as part of the McCarran-Walter
Act in 1952, but were rarely enforced before 1986. The vast majority of immigrants caught
crossing the border without authorization before 2004 were returned or deported through the
civil immigration system without criminal prosecution.
• Prosecutions climbed slowly throughout the 1990s and skyrocketed beginning in about 2004,
largely as a result of Operation Streamline.
• About half of the individuals prosecuted in federal court nationwide in 2015—and over half
of the individuals prosecuted in federal court in 2014—were prosecuted for crossing the
border.
• Approximately 700,000 people have been prosecuted for illegal entry or re-entry, through
Streamline or other prosecutions, since Operation Streamline began. Almost 70,000
migrants were criminally prosecuted at the border during federal fiscal year 2015 alone.
• The U.S. spent over $5.5 billion dollars incarcerating criminally prosecuted immigrants
between 2006 and 2011, including $1.02 billion in 2011 alone. Private-prison companies
made a profit of over $246,561 per day— $90 million per year—for incarcerating
immigrants on criminal charges in 2011.
• Latinos now make up more than half of all those sentenced to federal prison, despite
comprising only 17% of the country’s population, largely because of the U.S. government’s
choice to prosecute large numbers of immigrants for crossing the border, as, contrary to
stereotype, both crime and incarceration rates are consistently lower among immigrants than
among the U.S.-born.
• The cost to the federal government of holding an immigrant in administrative detention is
$161 per day. Although exact figures are difficult to obtain, cost of incarcerating an
immigrant on criminal charges is believed to be similar.
• The two largest U.S. private-prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and
GEO Group, Inc., received more than $1.4 billion in revenue from federal government
contracts in 2011—more than double the corresponding figure from 2005.
• The lobbying arms of private-prison companies provide large sums of campaign donations to
federal lawmakers and presidential candidates. Corrections Corporation of America or
individuals closely affiliated with that corporation have provided Arizona Senator John
McCain with over $30,000 in campaign donations during the course of his career.

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