CAITLIN OPRYSKO
POLITICO
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.
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.
