Author: mopress

Three press releases yesterday from the Geo Group show which way the world drifts. First, the company secured a contract from Florida to manage an existing detention camp while it builds an expanded one. Second, the company announced plans to expand a Texas detention camp in Del Rio. And third, the company reported that sales of common stock would be used to pay for the Texas construction. Does this mean that Geo Group stockholders now have a vested interest in filling the borderland jails?
Get tomorrow’s headlines today at the Geo Group press room.

“My own feeling about private prisons is that the biggest issue with private prisons, for me, is that when you introduce that kind of private capital into this field, what private prisons do, either directly or indirectly, is mitigate toward more and more prisons, because what they’re interested in is market share. That’s what they do. This is a business. So the more prisoners they have, the more money they make.”–Michael Jacobson speaking on Democracy Now (June 13, 2006)

In a telephone conversation last week, an L.A. activist talked about “neo-liberalism.” It is a crucial term for globalization activists, but it can be confusing for audiences in the USA, since it denotes right-wing privatization. We’ll use the term in an effort to accustom local readers to international dialogue. At any rate, the Center for Public Policy Priorities has presented an excellent summary of events regarding a Texas experiment with neo-liberalism in human services, pasted below–gm
Background: Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E)

The 2003 Legislature directed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to change the way people apply for public benefits, including Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, and cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), by cutting state workers and relying heavily on telephone call centers.

HHSC was given the option to either operate or outsource the call centers, and opted to turn over a large portion of eligibility system operations to private contractors. HHSC dubbed the new system Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E).

The state entered into a contract that included not just the new call centers, but also CHIP eligibility services, several major Medicaid contracted services, and maintenance of the new eligibility computer system (TIERS) the state had been developing for years.

HHSC planned to close 99 of its 381 eligibility offices by the end of 2006, with four new call centers playing a major role in processing applications and renewals. Eventually, clients would be able to apply via the Internet as well.

Children’s Problems Soon Apparent

The new contractor took over CHIP enrollment and renewal for the entire state in November 2005. Transition to the new IE&E system began in Travis and Hays counties in January 2006, and was scheduled to “roll out “ (phase in) across the state over a 10-month period. (This first phase of the IE&E roll-out also affected a small number of clients who used to live in Travis and Hays counties, whose cases were processed and remain in the new TIERS system.)

Serious problems with processing CHIP renewals and new applications for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid soon became apparent: Children’s Medicaid enrollment dropped an unprecedented 29,000 from December 1 to January 1; CHIP renewal rates plummeted from 84% to 52%; and new CHIP enrollees diminished to half their usual level.

By early March it was clear that the Medicaid decline was not a temporary aberration, CHIP renewals remained dismally low, and disenrollments surged (see table, page 7). Child health advocates shared their concerns with HHSC officials and the press. HHSC extended CHIP coverage for about 6,000 children whose parents had not been given proper or accurate notice by the contractor of their correct enrollment fees.

USDA Oversight

Meanwhile, it was also becoming clear that processing of Medicaid and Food Stamps renewals and applications in Travis and Hays counties was significantly backlogged. Problems there with the IE&E pilot (run by the same contractor) included the same issues plaguing the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations—multiple computer system issues, training deficits, flawed processes, and staffing shortfalls—but clients’ woes were compounded by the acute and worsening under-staffing of HHSC’s eligibility offices statewide.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA, which oversees the Food Stamp Program) conducted a Program Access Review of IE&E operations in late March, which included conference calls with community groups, legal services, and anti-hunger advocates to hear their reports on the roll-out.

IE&E Roll-out Delayed for 30 Days…

On April 5, HHSC Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced the agency would delay IE&E roll-out to the next planned region (Hill Country counties) in order to make technical and operational improvements and would review the system’s readiness again in 30 days. HHSC cited the need for “better training for customer service representatives in the call centers, a process to more quickly resolve complicated cases, better reporting tools to track cases and workload, and improved data collection.”

In April legislative hearings, HHSC officials acknowledged many problems with the IE&E transition and contractor including serious state staffing deficits. Based on their review, USDA officials conveyed to HHSC in April their concerns about the project including lack of timeliness in application processing, inability of the contractor’s front-end computer system to interface with TIERS (adding to backlogs), high call abandonment rates and long hold times at the call center, and lack of correct policy knowledge by contractor staff.

USDA’s independent project monitor identified several fundamental concerns: inadequate readiness testing of computer functions, a roll-out timeline that was too fast to allow for identification and resolution of all problems, inadequate staffing levels, insufficient training of private contractor staff, and shortcomings in some aspects of call center technology.

On April 11, HHSC announced that a new $3 million marketing and public information campaign for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid would begin in May (these activities had been largely abandoned after the budget-cutting 2003 legislative session). While notable agency efforts to improve the CHIP and IE&E processes produced a temporary improvement in call abandonment rates and hold times in April, problematic application and renewal trends and client complaints showed little if any improvement.

On reaching the deadline for determining CHIP enrollment for May, HHSC faced terminating a record number of nearly 50,000 children in a single month, for a dismal renewal rate of only 23.5% (compared to a fiscal year 2005 average of 80%). The agency elected instead to continue coverage of 27,768 children for an additional month while their families were given more time to provide missing information or to submit payments.

…And Now On Hold Indefinitely

On May 4, the HHSC Commissioner announced findings of its 30-day review. Importantly, this announcement indicated that the original roll-out schedule has essentially been suspended indefinitely until problems can be resolved. HHSC would retain 1,000 of the 1,900 state eligibility workers it had planned to lay off, and the remaining layoffs would be postponed for 12 months.

It is important to note that this decision did not increase the number of state staff working in the system; it simply reduced and postponed the planned reduction in staff.

Revised procedures announced by HHSC included: having state eligibility workers in the Midland call center oversee private “customer service” staff to ensure they give out correct information; returning most processing of Travis and Hays Medicaid and Food Stamp cases from contractor staff to state workers; new policy training of customer service staff; a new “escalation” process for directing complex policy questions from contractor staff to state workers, and new training for private workers on how to use the contractor’s and the state’s computer systems.

The announcement also noted that many contractor workers were unable to locate information that was already in their system. HHSC’s May 4 announcement also detailed changes to the contractor’s CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations, including extending timelines for collection of missing information and enrollment fees, allowing third-party verification of income, and accepting some missing information via telephone (rather than extended postal exchanges that cause children to lose coverage through missed deadlines).

H
HSC staff, the HHSC Office of Inspector
General, and independent evaluators would examine various aspects of the contractor’s performance and processes. The state pledged to more carefully oversee contractor correspondence with families, and to seek stakeholder input in improving those communications. Grave Concerns Remain in Early June Advocates and providers welcomed HHSC’s decision to postpone the rollout, and support its efforts to improve the system and involve advocates in these activities.

However, grave concerns remain for CHIP, Medicaid, TANF and Food Stamps for several reasons. CHIP applications and renewals—and a significant share of new applications for Children’s Medicaid—are still being operated exclusively by the new contractor, because CHIP eligibility has always been primarily operated by a private contractor.

Thus, state workers cannot step in to fix the problems, and HHSC’s contingency plans to stop the dramatic decline in CHIP must instead rely largely on the contractor’s ability to resolve the problems.

On May 25, the Texas CHIP Coalition submitted a letter to HHSC Commissioner Hawkins detailing recommended steps needed to reverse the decline in CHIP and Children’s Medicaid enrollment. The letter (located at (http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=534) noted that the new contractor’s CHIP performance has “serious and as yet unresolved problems”, which did not bode well for the same contractor’s take-over of major responsibilities for Medicaid and Food Stamps under IE&E, potentially affecting more than 4 million Texans (thirteen times the size of the CHIP program) including children, the aged, and Texans with disabilities.

The Coalition urged HHSC to make successful reversal of the problems with CHIP a prerequisite for any further roll-out of the IE&E model. Detailed CHIP statistics have not yet been released for June 2006, but preliminary data show that CHIP enrollment fell to 293,564, a drop of 5,212 children from May.

On June 2, HHSC issued a press statement announcing that it would continue to extend deadlines for enrollment fees and missing information to protect children form losing their health coverage and give the agency and the contractor more time to correct the problems causing the decline.

Meanwhile, parents continue to report applications and renewals that appear to have been lost or delayed for months. In the third week of May, the “call abandonment” rate for IE&E was over 22%, and for the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid line was over 41% (average hold times were 6 and 15 minutes, respectively). Get the full report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities

Reviewing the Mar del Pata Plan of Action forged at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Argentina last year (Nov. 2005) we find the two footnotes most instructive. In both cases, the USA delegation refuses to honor the precedence of international rights for workers and migrant workers.
For example, here is paragraph 18 as agreed to by the Summit of the Americas, emphasis added:

18. To adopt measures to encourage the full and effective exercise of the rights of all workers, including migrant workers, as well as application of core labor standards, such as those contained in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up, adopted in 1998. Explore ways for the ILO to provide technical advisory services to member states to help them accomplish that objective.

In the following footnote to paragraph 18, the USA prefers the authority of state law to “core labor standards” of the ILO. Instead of “full and effective exercise” of international rights, the USA prefers to “promote respect”:

Paragraph 18: The United States reserves on this paragraph and prefers instead the following text: “Protect and promote the rights of all workers, including migrant workers in accordance with the legal framework of each country, and applicable international law, and promote respect for the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up. Explore ways for the ILO to provide technical advisory services to Member States to help them accomplish that objective.”

And here is the summit’s paragraph on migrant workers with emphasis added:

To strengthen constructive dialogue on international migration, with a view to full recognition of human rights of migrant workers, reduce their vulnerable conditions at work, as well as advocate effective compliance of the principle of equality and non-discrimination at work in accordance with international instruments in this area and, thereby, ensure that migration is an orderly process that benefits all parties and boosts productivity at the global level.

Compare this to the second and last footnote attached to the summit plan by the USA:

Paragraph 20: The United States notes that this language was discussed in connection with the declaration and consensus was achieved, including the United States, on the basis of the following language: “increase Inter-American cooperation and dialogue to reduce and discourage undocumented migration as well as to promote migration processes in accordance with the legal system of each state and applicable international human rights law.”

Activists from the USA who would argue for the precedence of international rights for border affairs, workers, and migrant workers may argue that they have the rest of the Americas on their side. In this case, where do real Americans stand?

Each year, 150,000 minors attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the USA. About 50,000 make the attempt without their parents.

And at Mexico’s southern border, most of the minors who attempt the crossing are unaccompanied. Some of the minors come from as far away as Ethiopia.

These are some of the findings reported by Mexico in its report to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers. See below for more:
Securing of foreign minors travelling alone

78. The situation of migrant child victims is particularly worrying. Of the roughly 150,000 minors who attempt to cross to the United States each year, either to be reunited with their families or simply to achieve a better standard of living for themselves, some 60,000 are deported. A third of minors who attempt the crossing do so without the company of relatives or with people smugglers.

79. Of approximately 200,000 Central Americans returned to their countries of origin from Mexico in 2004, around 17 per cent were minors, most were travelling unaccompanied and many were returning for the second, third or fourth time.

80. Upon securing an unaccompanied minor, INM alerts the corresponding consulate so that the latter can begin trying to locate the minor’s family and link up with a counterpart institution to DIF in the country of origin that will take charge of the minor. When the consulate informs INM that it has lists of family or institutional contacts and provides a safe conduct for the minor, INM begins the process of returning the minor to his/her country of origin.

81. DIF provides support for housing unaccompanied foreign minors aged under 12 years, provided that they fulfil the norms of the home in which they are placed, do not require special care (mentally handicapped children, among others) and stay only for a short time.

82. For minors who do not fulfil the foregoing norms, INM has built special facilities at the Iztapalapa migrant holding centre to shelter and care for adolescents under the Institute’s protection pending completion of the procedures for returning them to their countries of origin.

83. Travel tickets for minors are supplied mainly by INM, except in some cases where they are supplied by the minors’ own relatives and/or consulates. Each minor is accompanied during the transfer process by a migration official who is responsible for the minor’s safety until he/she is handed over to family members and the corresponding authorities in the country of
origin.

84. INM is currently working to fit out special areas for minors within its different facilities to provide them with the necessary care and protection.

85. As part of inter-agency cooperation measures, on 25 January 2005 DIF and the National School of Social Work of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) presented a methodology for the care of adolescent migrants, which is a model for the care of minors under INM protection at the Iztapalapa migrant holding centre. This model will be replicated in other
INM migrant holding centres.

86. In some cases, repatriation is delayed because consulates do not receive an immediate response from the institutions responsible for caring for children in their countries.

87. For the Mexican Government, it is important to keep families together. Accordingly, if foreigners travelling with minors are secured, the children remain at the migrant holding centre or else, at the request of their parents or relatives, are sent to DIF until the time comes for their repatriation.

88. On 19 May 2005, the Ministry of the Interior, INM and DIF signed an agreement establishing joint measures for repatriated unaccompanied Mexican and foreign migrant children and adolescents that is a basic tool for providing the necessary comprehensive, differentiated care to migrant minors in the country.

89. The object of this agreement is to lay the bases for cooperation among the participating entities, committing DIF to providing shelter for migrant children under age 12 through the network of public and private shelters participating in the inter-agency programme for border-area children and INM to doing the same for migrant children age 12 and over in migrant holding centres, in keeping with the methodologies, technical advice and training provided by the national DIF scheme.

90. During 2004, the Iztapalapa migrant holding centre housed 4,142 minors: 879 girls (21.3 per cent) and 3,263 boys (78.7 per cent). Of these, 624 (15 per cent) were aged 0 to 11 years and 3,518 (84.9 per cent) were in the 12 to 17 age group.

91. The minors came from 31 countries, the largest numbers coming from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador and Brazil. There were also minors from countries outside the region: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Lithuania and Sierra Leone.

92. To deal comprehensively with the problem of the risks faced by vulnerable minors living in the country’s border areas, principally the northern border, an inter-agency project for the care of border-area minors was set up in 1996 under the Mexico-United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Cooperation Programme.

93. The purpose of the project is to provide care for such minors and ensure respect for their human rights from the moment when they are secured until they rejoin their families or communities of origin, through the coordinated efforts of the following entities: INM, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Scheme for the Comprehensive Development of
the Family, under the overall responsibility of the latter.

94. The project operates on Mexico’s northern border and work is currently under way on a specific programme for the country’s southern border, coordinated with the government of the state of Chiapas.

95. The inter-agency project for border-area minors comprises a network of 22 transit shelters throughout the length of the northern border, involving three levels of government and civil society organizations, to provide care for repatriated migrant minors.

96. From January to June 2005, 26,330 minors were repatriated, 3.6 per cent fewer than in the same period of 2004, and 14,108 minors were channelled, according to their characteristics, to the various public and private institutions belonging to the network of transit shelters, to other institutions that care for such minors and directly to their family members, 43 per cent more than in the same period of 2004.

97. It should also be mentioned that the implementing regulations of the General Population Act state that: “The Ministry of the Interior, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Scheme for the Comprehensive Development of the Family, shall promote agreements with state governments and state schemes for the comprehensive development of the family establishing mechanisms for cooperation and coordination in carrying out measures benefiting repatriated migrant minors, in order to guarantee their rights under the law.”

98. Accordingly, the Mexican Government has signed a number of agreements with United States authorities for the safe and orderly repatriation of Mexican nationals. These agreements establish places, times and procedures in each border state for safe and orderly repatriation, emphasizing the care that must be given to people in special circumstances, women who are pregnant and/or accompanied by infants, injured persons and unaccompanied minors.
Repatriated minors travelling alone are channelled directly by INM regional offices to municipal DIF schemes or network shelters.

99. The Beta Groups have also strengthened coordination with centres located in border areas that care for repatriated minors, as in the specific case of the state of Baja California where two centres located in Tijuana and Mexicali have been in operation since February 2004. On 18 November 2004, a c

entre for repatriated minors was also opened in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.

100. The Mexican Government is continuing to set up new modules throughout the length of the border zone so that all minors can be handed over directly to DIF for channelling to the various shelters and handing over to their family members.

101. INM hands over repatriated minors to the DIF staff responsible for the module, where the minor is given a social, medical and psychological evaluation. Investigations are also begun to locate family members so that the minor can be returned to his/her family or community of origin.

102. Through its offices on the northern border, INM takes measures to back up and fulfil the objectives of the programme for the care of border-area minors by means of the following agreements and commitments:

− To reiterate the need to comply with bilateral agreements on orderly repatriation, emphasizing that INM offices may receive minors outside established hours only in cases involving their safety;

− To ensure the necessary compatibility between the operating hours of the National Institute for Migration and those of the social welfare institutions to which minors are channelled;

− To channel minors, at the moment of repatriation, directly to DIF or to the governmental and non-governmental agencies responsible for returning them to their families and places of origin;

− To make minors aware of their rights and discourage them from re-entering United States territory in the future;

− To strengthen the measures taken in the 11 northern border communities where the programme operates.

Measures on the southern border

103. Under the inter-agency programme for the care of border-area minors, efforts are being made to implement a care strategy for migrant minors on the southern border. To that end, a coordination group has been set up, comprising the national DIF scheme, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, INM, the Institute for Human Development (IDH), the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission (COMAR) and UNICEF. As part of this strategy, the government of the state of
Chiapas, through IDH, set up a shelter for migrant minors in April 2005 in the city of Tapachula,
Chiapas, to offer comprehensive care to migrant minors. There are also plans to sign a local
inter-agency cooperation agreement among IDH, the national DIF, COMAR and INM to establish procedures for the care of Central American migrant minors in Tapachula, Chiapas.

104. The Agreement for the Safe and Orderly Repatriation of Central Americans on the Borders of Mexico and Guatemala, signed on 2 July 2004, establishes that unaccompanied minors shall be repatriated only through the intervention of officials of the consular and migration authorities of the Central American country concerned, guaranteeing at all times their integrity and safety and respect for their human rights.

105. In July 2004, INM travelled overland from the Iztapalapa migrant holding centre to the Tapachula, Chiapas, migrant holding centre to observe and improve the procedure for repatriating Central American adolescents. It also verified the kind of treatment and care given to adolescents when they were handed over to their migration authorities on the borders of Honduras and El Salvador, where there is no involvement of the authorities responsible for the
care of minors.

106. On 21 November 2004, the construction of the model migrant holding centre in Tapachula, Chiapas, began on a 30,000 sq. metre site in the state with the greatest volume and movement of secured migrants in the country. The centre has a projected capacity of around 960 temporary places and 490 overnight places, with specific areas for men, women, families
and minors. In keeping with applicable international standards, the project includes the construction of dormitories, interview rooms, rooms for medical visits, children’s and recreation areas, dining rooms, a laundry, a library, a social work and psychological care area and offices for CNDH staff. To view the Mexico report in English, French, or Spanish see the preview of an upcoming meeting of the Committee on Migrant Workers (Geneva)