![\"Rania](\"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/raniakhalek.jpeg\" "\\"Independent")
<\/a>Rania Khalek<\/p><\/div>\n
On Wednesday, March 27, hundreds of inmates at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico, engaged in a peaceful demonstration against poor treatment.\u00a0Somewhere between 250 to 500 prisoners refused to leave the recreation yard in a demonstration that lasted for over 12 hours.<\/p>\n
The Center, which houses over 1,100 minimum-security federal prisoners (all male), is owned and operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation\u2019s largest for profit system. CCA facilities are notorious for rampant\u00a0human rights abuses<\/a>, not\u00a0exactly shocking for a company whose sole purpose is to profit from locking human beings in cages.<\/p>\n Media Fail<\/strong><\/p>\n As of this writing, a Google News search of \u201cCibola County Correctional Center\u201d results in just six news stories, all from local outlets. And all six of them read like a press release written by CCA.<\/p>\n Protesting is a risky endeavor for prisoners. It practically gaurantees retaliation from prison staff and more likely than not nothing will change. So it\u2019s highly unlikely that prisoners went into this for no reason. Nevertheless, the authorities repeatedly claimed not to know why the prisoners were protesting and the local outlets shamefully trumpeted what was obviously CCA\u2019s carefully crafted narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cPublic Information Officer Stephen Brown said they still were not able to find out why the inmates were protesting,\u201d\u00a0KOB Eyewitness News 4<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>. But as far as I can tell,\u00a0News 4<\/em>\u00a0made no attempt to speak with inmates or their advocates. Instead, they spoke with the parents of corrections officers inside the facility for added insight.<\/p>\n In an update,\u00a0News 4<\/em>\u00a0assured it\u2019s readers that it was \u201cstill pressing<\/a>\u00a0for answers on why hundreds of inmates protested.\u201d But don\u2019t get too excited because the outlet spent the rest of the segment speaking with residents who live nearby the facility.<\/p>\n Action 7 News\u00a0<\/em>not only\u00a0quoted the same couple<\/a>\u00a0that appeared in\u00a0News 4<\/em>\u2018s report, but also spoke with the mother of yet another prison guard. As for why there was a protest,\u00a0Action 7<\/em>\u00a0said the authorities were still investigating (move along, nothing else to see here).<\/p>\n The\u00a0Cibola Beacon-News<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was the only outlet that spoke with anyone besides the prison authorities, but it had nothing to do with extra work on their part. \u201c[T]he Beacon did receive an anonymous call early Wednesday about a possible demonstration because inmates claimed they were being treated unfairly. No specifics of mistreatment were provided by the caller,\u201d the\u00a0Beacon<\/em>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n Undocumented Immigrants<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>None of these outlets even bothered to mention that Cibola Correctional is one of\u00a013 privately-owned prisons<\/a>\u00a0contracted out by the federal government to meet the prison system\u2019s so-called\u00a0\u201dcriminal alien requirements.\u201d It doesn\u2019t take that much digging to figure it out. Even CCA\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAll offenders at Cibola\u2026are illegal immigrants.\u201d This should immediately raise red flags given the laundry list of documented horrors that have taken place at privately-run immigrant detention centers.<\/p>\n CAR facilities were created around 2000 to house undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies, though more often than not these are petty, nonviolent crimes as well as offenses upgraded to felony, such as reentry (reentering the county illegally).<\/p>\n Last year, Justice Strategies released a damning\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0about these facilities, titled, \u201cPrivately Operated Federal Prisons for Immigrants: Expensive, Unsafe, Unnecessary<\/a>\u201c, which lays out the substandard conditions in these for-profit prisons.<\/p>\n As the owner of several CAR prisons, CCA is no stranger to accusations of mistreatment.<\/p>\n Last year, a\u00a0riot erupted<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0Adams County Correctional Center, a CCA-owned CAR prison in Mississippi. Several were injured and one prison guard was killed. CCA told the media that gang violence was to blame but it was later revealed it was a protest against abusive conditions that got out of control.<\/p>\n Another CCA-owned car facility, Eden Detention Center in Texas, broke out in a riot in 2010. \u201cThe number of inmates at the detention center, according to census estimates from 2008, exceeds by about 200 the general population in Eden,\u201d\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0the San Angelo Times.<\/p>\n The pattern of cost-cutting, negligence and abuse at CCA-owned prisons goes back even further, but that would take more paragraphs than you\u2019re probably willing to read. The important thing to take away is that last week wasn\u2019t\u00a0the first time inmates at a CCA-owned CAR prison demonstrated against mistreatment.<\/p>\n In fact, it wasn\u2019t even the first protest at Cibola. In April of 2001, some 700 Cibola prisoners staged an identical day-long protest in the recreation yard, which ended with guards firing\u00a0tear gas<\/a>\u00a0to force inmates inside.\u00a0Back then, the authorities said they didn\u2019t know why the prisoners were protesting (sound familiar?), a claim the media dutifully reported. Apparently, very little has changed.<\/p>\n Inmates Seen as Sub-human<\/strong><\/p>\n Several local residents\u00a0left several nasty comments<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0Beacon-News Facebook page, highlighting the hatred Cibola inmates are surrounded by.<\/p>\n John P. Gonzalez wants the authorities to spray the inmates down with a fire hose.<\/p>\n Teri Esquivel-Placencia suggests sending the protesting inmates to Joe Arpaio\u2019s Arizona prison, known nationwide for its racist and brutally abusive treatment of prisoners.<\/p>\n Colton Baca left a highly disturbing comment about wanting to \u201cgas them\u201d, which implies that he works as a guard at the prison in question.<\/p>\n Joseph Apodaca, who is a correctional officer at the state-run Western New Mexico Correctional Facility\u00a0according to his profile, also suggested tear gassing the inmates.<\/p>\n Though prisoners are generally seen as sub-human in the eyes of many Americans, the comments reflected an added hatred stemming from bigotry and xenophobia, such as this comment by Thomas Council:<\/p>\n Other commenters showed a complete lack of understanding about who these particular prisoners are suggesting that the inmates deserved to be mistreated because they were paying for committing crimes like drive-by shootings and assaulting elderly women, when in reality many of the inmates are imprisoned for minor, nonviolent offenses.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the prisoners at Cibola are almost certainly facing painful retaliation for their disobedience. And the media seems to have already moved on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Rania Khalek on March 31, 2013 On Wednesday, March 27, hundreds of inmates at the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, New Mexico, engaged in a peaceful demonstration against poor treatment.\u00a0Somewhere between 250 to 500 prisoners refused to leave … Continue reading <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n