I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The private prison industry, including a couple of familiar names in New Mexico, had a hand in shaping Arizona’s controversial illegal immigration law, which stands to benefit them financially, NPR reports today.
As NPR reported, “the law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.”
According to documents uncovered by the network, “executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in ‘a significant portion of our revenues’ from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.”
Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), which operates the New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility in Grants, was at a seminal meeting in the nation’s capital last December where Arizona’s eventual law was drafted. Meanwhile CCA and GEO Group, which operates three New Mexico correctional facilities, contributed to the 36 co-sponsors of the eventual law.
New Mexico has one of the highest rates of prisons operated by private firms, with four of the state’s 10 correctional facilities under private management.
The corporations and lawmakers that helped draft the law in the nation’s capital last December viewed it as a model for similar pieces of legislation. Bills similar to the one that eventually became law in Arizona have been introduced in other states.
