Utah's Management & Training Corporation's (MTC) role in Ariz. immigration law

Tougher immigration laws mean more detentions and bigger contracts for prison companies.
By Jesse Fruhwirth

Many people suspect that backroom deals and corporate interests influence public policy, and rarely are those backroom negotiations exposed to the public. But investigators from In These Times magazine, NPR and others have unlocked one such backroom where Arizona’s controversial immigration law was hashed out, and discovered Utah connections in the process.

A private group of conservative state lawmakers and private-prison-industry representatives discussed and revised Arizona’s controversial immigration bill—both hailed and decried as the toughest in the nation—before it became law. Not only was a Utah lawmaker the chair of that private committee that discussed the bill, but new research also shows that a Utah company—the nation’s third-largest private-corrections company— made campaign donations to the sponsor of Arizona’s law four times in recent years. Immigrants are detained in prisons prior to deportation, so private jailers have a financial interest in tougher immigration laws.

Most news about corporate interests influencing Arizona’s immigration law has focused on Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private-prison company.



Many news accounts—first from In These Times—revealed the tight connections Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s staff has to CCA. Most notably, Brewer’s re-election campaign chairman’s lobbying company represents CCA, and Brewer’s communications director is a former CCA lobbyist whose wife still lobbies on the company’s behalf. That close connection between lawmakers and the companies that benefit from government decisions extends beyond Brewer’s office.

More recent news accounts from NPR’s Morning Edition explored how CCA had private access to state lawmakers from across the country through a task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that advocates for limited government, free markets and federalism. As a result of those meetings, state lawmakers across the country, including Utah, have plans to introduce legislation inspired by the ALEC’s model legislation that became Arizona law. A CCA representative was a member of the Public Safety and Elections task force of ALEC, a body which was chaired by Utah State Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clinton.

Ray has plans to introduce immigration-related legislation in this year’s session, as does Sen. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, with whom Ray traveled to Arizona this summer for a tour of that state and a review of its immigration issues.

ALEC is ostensibly a conservative, nonpartisan education organization that gathers state lawmakers and industry representatives so they can learn from one another’s experiences and together craft “model legislation” to be introduced in any state legislature.

Ray says the private organization—which charges individuals $2,500 per year for a seat on the committee Ray chairs—is similar to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only corporate sponsors can’t buy a seat at the table at NCSL as they can at ALEC.

Critics complain New York-based ALEC—a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with limits on how it can engage in politics—is lobbying on a grand scale, including hosting parties, sporting events and dinners, and not merely educating conservative lawmakers. Ray says the line between the two is fuzzy.

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