The government is paying for thousands of detention beds for illegal immigrant families though nearly 40 percent of them were unused in late June as the Department of Homeland Security pushed to release parents and children into the community, The Washington Times reported.
The biggest private facility used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in Dilley, Texas, which can hold 2,400 parents and children, was at 63 percent capacity June 27 and 28, with 886 beds empty, the Times reported.
The Dilley facility's contract nears $40 million a year, the Times reported.
The contractor who operates the facility "is paid a flat rate of $3.1 million per month to operate the facility regardless of the number of residents, which means that the government saves no money in reducing the number of families processed at the facility," Wendi Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University in Oregon, wrote in a sworn declaration to a federal court two weeks ago, the Times reported.
The open space has become controversial as the Trump administration presses to reunite as many as 2,500 children separated from their parents in the wake of a zero-tolerance policy.
According to the Times, the government released more than 50 young children and their parents after reuniting them last week, placing them in an "Alternatives to Detention" program that usually involves an ankle monitoring device or a program of check-ins designed to make sure they return for their deportation hearings.
Lawyer Peter Schey told the Times the unused space suggests the government wrongly claims there is an illegal immigration crisis, and questioned the terms of a contract that pays out regardless of how much space the government is using.
"It is shameful that major corporations are reaping massive profits operating family detention centers and being paid tens of millions of dollars regardless of the number of families actually housed and serviced in these facilities," he told the news outlet.
He told the Times the administration could end the contracts and instead use group homes licensed by the federal Housing and Urban Affairs Department and local governments.
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