LUMPKIN, GA -- Its yards lined with long barbed-wire fences, the Stewart Detention Center is like most any other prison: an thick building with thick windows, heavy security with metal detectors, a sanitized anonymity that comes with the continual rotation of inmates.

Located about an hour south of Columbus, Ga., the center houses men held for immigration violations who will likely be deported in short time, making it hard for families to find their brothers, fathers and husbands.

"It will take us days to find someone, sometimes weeks because not even the family knows where they are,” said Ximena Sanchez, a social worker with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of Hispanics and Latinos. Sanchez helps connect families, a task that often proves difficult as inmates are often transferred to detention centers in other states after being processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. But it is also likely that Sanchez will find them in Stewart.

The average man stays at Stewart 45 days after processing, though some stay for more than a year, said Anton Flores, who works with the immigrant crisis outreach group Alterna. An email from ICE public information officer Ivan Ortiz set the number closer to 32. No one there is being held for a crime but is instead awaiting deportation or to have their immigration case dealt in another way.

Managed by the Corrections Corporation of America, Stewart is one of several such facilities in the country. Based in Nashville, Tenn., CCA runs 64 correctional facilities and detention centers in 19 states and the District of Columbia. In a little more than 15 years, its inmate population has grown from about 500,000 in 1983 to more than 2 million inmates in 2009, something many attribute to the role for profits now have in imprisonment.

Under a program referred to as 287(g), police departments across the country, including many in Georgia, enter into agreements with ICE in order to help them identify criminal aliens by screening those they arrest for their immigration status. If it’s decided they have violated their immigration status, the inmate is sent to facilities such as Stewart. Locally, both Hall and Cobb counties participate in the program, and Gwinnet County underwent a trial period earlier this year.

In addition to Stewart, CCA operates the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detainee center that converted in 2006 from a medium security prison. The facility, based in Taylor, Texas, operates in contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Like with Stewart, inmates there are in transit, slated for deportation or awaiting an appeal.

Not long after that facility opened, though, a lawsuit filed against ICE claimed inmates were held in inhumane conditions, something ICE noted in an internal memo regarding a recent inspection, as published by the Nashville Scene:  The inspectors noted that their ‘overall review of the facility can be accurately rated as deficient’ and determined that the staff wasn’t following basic standards of detention.” The case was settled in 2007.

According to one inmate’s report, at Stewart, there is limited access to toilet paper and haircuts. All inmates not in solitary confinement are able to exercise every two days. Hygiene products and phone cards are only available for purchase from commissar.  Sanchez said the phone cards provide an inmate’s only access to legal help and family. Ortiz’s email said all inmates receive a commissary number which serves as a PIN number for collect calls and free calls to lawyers and their consulates.

The manager is present once a week and the guards are too overworked to deal with many issues. According to one description, most men slept in open rooms that have only about two feet between bunk beds.  Inmates who are able to work at the prison sleep two to a cell in another section. The working inmates are lucky in another way – they are paid $1 to $3 a day to cook and clean, allowing them to purchase the needed phone cards and some food from the commissary. Inmates can exercise every two days and there is a volley ball court. There are even books—in English.

Groups like GLAHR and others occasionally interview detainees to ensure basic human rights are maintained.

“It’s like keeping an eye on the police,” said Sayuri Espinoza, an activist with Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, during the long drive from Atlanta to Lumpkin, Georgia. Sanchez recently visited Stewart to talk to a Columbian man awaiting deportation after serving a six-year drug trafficking sentence.

After a lengthy wait, Sanchez was called to a clean, glaringly bright visiting room with a long row of plate glass windows separating inmate from visitor, their only contact the receiver of a phone. Animated through composed, Carlos* explained to Sanchez his case and his living conditions.

He was at Stewart for five weeks before he saw a judge. Two days later, he saw a deportation officer who photographed and fingerprinted him, promising to contact the Columbian consulate to obtain the necessary papers to leave. At the time of Sanchez’s interview, two weeks had passed with no word of when the consulate would help. Carlos said he was not informed of his right to legal representation. Detainees have the right to legal help if they can get it but they are not provided with lawyers. Ortiz’s email stated that ICE requires that a list of pro bono legal organizations is posted on detainee housing area bulletin boards, law libraries and in other areas designated appropriate by the facility. The email also claimed Stewart had a legal orientation program twice a week and that a “Know Your Rights” video was played daily on televisions at the detention center.

While Mexicans are more easily deported as they do not require traveling papers, immigrants from any other country must wait for documents from their consulate to leave the United States. Consulates are often slow to respond.

“They don’t want to deal with it,” Sanchez said.

Carlos also said he was not informed of his right to legal representation. He also detailed other inmates’ difficulty in obtaining both medicine and medical treatment, a common complaint for many.

“People usually say ‘they just gave me some pills and sent me back’,” she said.

Sanchez often calls Stewart’s medical department, an exercise she believes is made in futility. She is quizzed on whether the inmate has filled out the proper forms, and other such questions.

But in at least two instances, her calls have paid off, Carlos told her. One inmate had not received crucial medication, and the other had a severely swollen face and chest pain. While the second man was deported and would likely receive more timely care, the first inmate soon received his pills.

Once Carlos was home in Colombia, he phoned Sanchez to thank her for her care in his case. While he was eventually deported, others still remain in limbo while waiting for the necessary traveling papers or for their appeal to be heard. Sanchez continues trying to find out where.

The Public Information Officer at Stewart politely declined an interview request.