Page 42 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek July 2, 2018

◀ Unemployment in
Raymondville is almost
triple the state average

almost $3 billion exclusively for detention. Facilities $15-an-hour job here in Raymondville,’ ” she says.
have opened across the country—including one in Moreno-Gongora agrees with Trump that deporta-
an old Walmart that’s holding about 1,500 children tions should occur swiftly and en masse. She calls 33
50 miles south of Willacy County, in Brownsville. As due process “bureaucratic red tape.”
capacity has increased, so has the amount of time When complete, the latest iteration of the cor-
detainees spend in prison, to an average of 44 days rection center will be named the El Valle Detention
in fiscal 2018 from 34.5 days in fiscal 2014. Facility. It will account for one-third of Prisonville’s
The next weapon in Trump’s war on immigra- 3-square-mile campus. MTC says the facility, like
tion is MTC’s building in Raymondville. At the facil- its other prisons, won’t be used to detain children.
ity on the outskirts of town—about a mile from the And it should be a boon for the community’s coffers:
local high school on the other side of Interstate 69, Last year, County Judge Aurelio Guerra estimated
which stretches to Brownsville on the border—MTC the county could see about $450,000 a year in addi-
officials are working to eliminate all remnants of tional revenue. Raymondville will benefit from the
the riot. Massive Kevlar tents were erected within operation’s sewer and water fees. It’s unclear how
90 days of President George W. Bush’s 2006 order many jobs the prison will create, though it will prob-
for a new immigrant detention prison. Large ably be a fraction of the 400 that were lost.
enough to hold 2,000 prisoners, the tents were at The facility could eventually become a politi- “It’s tough
the center of the 2015 violence and have now been cal liability, just like the U.S. Customs and Border to turn away
razed. The largest remaining structure could hold Protection site down the road in McAllen, now a opportunities
1,200 people before the riot. hub for protesters demanding an end to the admin- that can help
Crews zip in and out of the building on golf carts istration’s policy of separating parents and chil- build this
as workers update the grounds and its cells. MTC dren entering through the southern border. Like community”
doesn’t yet have a contract with ICE, but a company many in Willacy County, Mayor Gonzales is a
spokesman says it’s in discussions. MTC is so confi- Hispanic Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton
dent, it held a job fair in late May to recruit admin- and opposes Trump’s immigration policies.
istrators and guards. Among the applicants was He recently toured MTC’s facility and says he’s
Angie Moreno-Gongora, who worked for MTC until impressed with the quality of its steel latrines and
the riot. While employed at the complex, she sued their proximity to the sinks. “It’s still hard to swal-
for back wages in a case that was ultimately settled low the pill that Trump won, and because of him
out of court. Now she’s ready to go back to work a lot of our people will be detained in those facili-
for MTC, if the pay’s right. “I want to work for MTC ties,” says Gonzalez, who as a child migrant laborer
because I tell people, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t find a picked cotton in the county. “But sometimes you