Arizona Passes SB 1070 Drafted by ALEC and Private Prison Companies

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signs Senate Bill 1070, the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration law in the United States, making it a state misdemeanor for immigrants to be in Arizona without carrying required documents and requiring law enforcement officers to determine immigration status during lawful stops when there is reasonable suspicion of illegal presence. NPR investigation reveals that the legislation was drafted at a December 2009 meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) attended by Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, representatives from Corrections Corporation of America (the country’s largest private prison company), and several dozen others—a full month and a half before Pearce introduced SB 1070 to the Arizona Senate. The final bill introduced in the legislature follows the ALEC model legislation “almost word for word.”

The private prison industry’s financial motives prove central to the law’s development and passage. Corrections Corporation of America reports to investors that they expect immigrant detention to become “a significant portion of our revenues,” with the company anticipating that SB 1070 “could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits” by sending “hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before.” Campaign finance records show that 30 of the bill’s 36 co-sponsors—two-thirds of whom either attended the December ALEC meeting or are ALEC members—received donations over six months from prison lobbyists or prison companies including Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation, and The GEO Group. The legislation attracts an almost unprecedented 36 co-sponsors.

SB 1070’s “show me your papers” provisions authorize racial profiling by directing police to check immigration status based on “reasonable suspicion,” a standard that critics argue inevitably relies on appearance and accent. The law faces immediate legal challenges and partial injunction by federal courts on grounds that immigration enforcement is exclusively federal jurisdiction. Despite the law’s partial invalidation, it serves as a model for copycat legislation in other states and demonstrates how corporate interests can exploit ALEC’s legislative laundering process to draft laws that create captive customer populations for private industries. The episode exposes ALEC’s role as a forum where corporations directly write legislation to serve their profit interests, with elected officials functioning as their agents for introducing corporate-authored bills into state legislatures—a pattern of institutional capture where the boundary between private corporate interests and public lawmaking dissolves entirely.