KARNES COUNTY, Texas – Federal officials showed off Tuesday a new 608-bed detention facility they say represents the Obama administration's pledge to overhaul America's much-maligned system for jailing immigration offenders.
Built at a cost of $30 million, the Karnes County Civil Detention Facility is the first designed to comply with reforms by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Gary Mead, ICE Executive Associate Director.
"We needed to revamp our outdated system," Mead said.
Mead said the agency listened to a wide range of stakeholders in the wake of criticism and legal challenges to the agency's earlier efforts to detain illegal immigrants.
"We heard them and we took them seriously, and that's what we're doing," Mead said.
He said numerous changes are evident at the facility that will begin taking in low-risk, male detainees in a matter of weeks.
Mead said the changes include more and better access to medical, dental and legal services, recreation and even natural lighting.
Mead also said ICE is consolidating its other detention facilities so that immigrants can be housed closer to where they were apprehended in an effort "to reduce the number transferred away from their families, their community and their attorneys."
However, Mead said there are no plans to make the Karnes County complex a "family facility" like the one in Pennsylvania.
Mead said ICE will pay Karnes County a per diem of $68 for each detainee that will then go to GEO, the private contractor that will operate the facility.
Karnes County Judge Barbara Najvar Shaw said the county will not be compensated other than an administrative fee.
Reed Smith, GEO regional vice president, said the company is in step with ICE's mission to do away with a penal, criminal justice model.
"It's a different mentality," Smith said.
Smith said the detainees will not be convicted felons or have numerous misdemeanor convictions.
"They simply came across the border and were apprehended," Smith said.
As a result of the new "softer" approach, Smith said he predicts "this is going to be a very successful facility, a model for the nation."
Following the media tour, a group of protestors were waiting outside with signs decrying the cost involved in housing immigrants.
Bob Libal, spokesman for Grassroots Leadership, a coalition of faith based, civil rights and immigrant advocate groups, said the Karnes County facility is not the solution.
Libal said there are community support programs that are "far more cost effective and far more humane."