The Profiteering of Migrant Suffering
In 2018, over $2.3 billion in federal contracts went to the private prison industry. The immigration and corrections policies under the Trump and Obama administrations resulted in a financial windfall for the biggest players in the prison industrial complex.
According to a recent Public Citizen analysis, ten large contracting firms working for federal agencies that implement federal immigration, corrections, and detention policies received $2.32 billion in federal contract revenue last year. An increase of 17 percent from nearly $2 billion at the start of President Donald Trump’s term and more than double the $942 million those same companies received in 2013.
These private contracting firms operate detention facilities and prisons, provide non-union security guards, transport detained migrants, and build-out the technological systems for immigration and corrections agencies, among many other services.
The rise in spending began during Barack Obama’s second term coinciding with a surge in migrants from Central America. But under Donald Trump, spending continued to ramp up as the federal government implemented and enforced Trump’s zero-tolerance policy; an effort to stem the flow of immigration into the United States. While the American people remain largely outraged by those policies, private contracting firms are benefiting financially.
Federal immigration detention under Trump has helped to highlight the sinister reality of the private detention industry. Many reports and investigations of private detention centers over many years have documented evidence and allegations of substandard medical care, violence, deaths, sexual abuse, suicides, and exploitative labor practices.
The prison industrial complex has continued to grow through both Democratic and Republican administrations and thrives as border crossings surge. In 2006, the New York Times wrote, “As the Bush administration gets tougher on illegal immigration and increases its spending on enforcement, some of the biggest beneficiaries may be the companies that have been building and running private prisons around the country.” A prediction that has since proved accurate.
By the end of Barack Obama’s term, the average daily population of detained migrants had grown from about 20,000 in 2000 to nearly 40,000. This prompted Obama officials to find more space to hold the new wave of migrants. Since the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the inmate population has soared to more than 50,000 detainees as of spring 2019.
As Central American families escaped violence and poverty in their home countries, the Obama administration’s family detention policies foreshadowed the Trump administration’s cruel zero-tolerance policy. While Obama promised to scale back the practice of using private prison corporations, he later backtracked on that promise allowing private contracting firms to operate migrant family detention centers.
“Frankly, we want to send a message that our border is not open to illegal migration, and if you come here, you should not expect to simply be released.” — Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, said at a CoreCivic detention center in Texas in December 2014.
A look at GEO Group, the largest of all the private detention contractors, shows us how its connections to government officials allow for the profiteering of migrant detentions. A former head of ICE, Julie Myers, serves on the company’s board. Scott Kerman, formerly California’s top state corrections official, also serves on the company’s board of directors. GEO Group also hired Daniel Ragsdale, former second-ranking ICE official, as executive vice president for contract compliance; David Venturella, former director for enforcement and removal at ICE, as senior vice president for client relations; and Joe Negron, former president of Florida’s state senate, as the company’s general counsel
Frank Lara, a former top Federal Bureau of Prisons official, was also hired as director of operations. During his time at the Bureau of Prisons, Lara sent a memo directing officials to transfer inmates to private contract facilities as a way to “alleviate the overcrowding at Bureau of Prisons’ institutions and maximize the effectiveness of private contracts.”
In April of 2017 under Trump, the GEO Group was awarded a $110 million contract to build a 1,000-bed migrant detention facility in North Houston. The company also announced a $25 million annual contract to reopen the ICE processing center in Basile, Louisiana, a $37 million annual contract to reopen a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Michigan, and a $10 million per year contract to expand the capacity of an ICE processing center in the Houston, Texas area.
CoreCivic, the second-largest private detention contractor, is not any different. CoreCivic has also hired numerous government officials. Stacia Hylton, former director of the U.S. Marshals Service under Obama, sits on the board. Harley Lappin, who was the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is also on the board, as well as Thurgood Marshall Jr., who was a Clinton Administration official and is former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s son.
The prison industrial complex connections to the federal government all but ensure awarding contracts that benefit the friends of administration officials — regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the oval office. In fact, connections to the White House only help to ensure the continued systemic profiteering of America’s unwelcomed continues to this day.
“neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” shall exist in the United States “except as punishment for a crime.” — the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
Crossing the border was criminalized during Jim Crow.
