Texas prison is big business for Eloy
Ties to facility earned city $450K last year
ELOY — The city makes more money from a private immigration detention facility located in Texas than it does from the one housed in Eloy, budget figures show.
The tentative budget for Eloy is around $38 million, but that reflects only a fraction of the actual money that passes through the city. Every year roughly $290 million is given to the city by the federal government in what’s called agency pass-through funds, which go directly to Corrections Corporation of America.
Of this $290 million, around $37 million goes to operate Eloy Detention Center and the rest, $253 million, goes to run another Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center over 900 miles away in the small town of Dilley, Texas.
