ICE Detains 5-Year-Old, Media Praises GoFundMe While Ignoring the Systemic Cruelty
📰 THE STORY: Newsweek highlights a successful GoFundMe campaign that raised over $200,000 for a 5-year-old boy detained by ICE, framing the public's generosity as a positive outcome amidst family separations at the border. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The current crisis of family separation and detention did not begin with the Trump administration. The US has a long
history of carceral immigration policies, including mass deportations during the 'Operation Wetback' in 1954 under Eisenhower, and a significant expansion of detention facilities and deportations under Obama, reaching a peak of over 409,000 deportations in 2012. The private prison industry has been lobbying for harsher immigration laws for decades. Double Standard: When governments like China are
accused of separating Uighur children from their families, it's widely condemned as a human rights atrocity and child abuse. Yet, when US government agencies like ICE systematically separate children from parents – sometimes irrevocably – it's framed as an unfortunate consequence requiring public charity, rather than a state-sanctioned human rights violation. The 'War on Terror' paradigm, which
justifies indefinite detention without due process for alleged enemies, has effectively been applied to asylum seekers. Follow the Money: The detention and deportation industrial complex is highly profitable. Private prison corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) directly profit from ICE contracts, which incentivize higher occupancy rates. According