A Familiar Pattern For Sinema: Take Donations, Do Donors’ Bidding, Rinse and Repeat
Sinema previously called private prisons a ‘bad deal for Arizona’ and a ‘disaster.’ Weird, as soon as she became one of their top recipients of campaign cash, she changed her mind. How unlike her. And of course, her failed border deal would have benefited this group of esteemed Sinema donors. Again, how unlike her.
Politico reports that since 2018, Sinema’s campaign and her leadership PAC have received $36,000 from PACs and employees of for-profit prison companies CoreCivic and Management and Training Corporation, including $8,000 from CoreCivic’s PAC in the second and fourth quarters of 2023. In 2022, before leaving the Democratic Party, she was the top Democratic recipient of donations from for-profit prison companies.
The timeline is pretty straightforward:
More from Politico below:
POLITICO: SINEMA’S SHIFT ON PRIVATE PRISONS
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who was one of the principal negotiators of the border deal that collapsed this week, received tens of thousands of dollars from the private prison industry, which likely would have benefited from the legislation, Daniel reports.
— The bill would have funded an increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity from 34,000 beds to 50,000. The private prison industry most likely would have been used to help meet that capacity, given that 90 percent of ICE detainees last July were held in privately run facilities, according to an ACLU analysis.
— Since 2018, Sinema’s campaign and her leadership PAC have received $36,000 from PACs and employees of for-profit prison companies CoreCivic and Management and Training Corporation, according to FEC records, including a total of $8,000 from CoreCivic’s PAC in the second and fourth quarters of last year. In the 2022 cycle, before leaving the Democratic Party, she was the top Democratic recipient of donations from for-profit prison companies, according to OpenSecrets.
— But before getting elected to the Senate, Sinema in 2017 voted for a House amendment to prohibit the federal government from using private companies to detain immigrants.
— Five years later, she introduced a border security amendment that, among other things, would have provided more than $1 billion to increase ICE detention capacity (without prohibiting the agency from using private prisons) and $425 million for “alternatives to detention,” which are often run by private industry.
— CoreCivic has reportedly looked into profiting from such alternatives and has lobbied Congress on the issue, but a company spokesperson told PI that “CoreCivic does not lobby on any policies, regulations or legislation that impact the basis for or duration of an individual’s detention.”
— At the start of his administration, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that phased out DOJ’s use of private facilities to detain individuals, but the order did not apply to ICE. A Sinema spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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