Newsweek Discovers Humanity, 6 Months Later
When Newsweek highlights a detained teen's 'We're All Human' plea, it glosses over the systemic dehumanization under ICE. This isn't a new phenomenon; it's a feature, not a bug, of an immigration enforcement apparatus that saw its budget balloon under multiple administrations, reaching over $8 billion in 2023. These funds, funneled to agencies that detain children, often line the pockets of
private prison contractors like GEO Group and CoreCivic, whose lobbyists pour millions into campaigns (OpenSecrets.org data shows CoreCivic alone spent over $3 million on lobbying in 2023). Instead of critiquing the politicians who enable this industrial detention complex, Newsweek presents the teenager's basic humanity as a poignant, isolated observation. One might ask: how many 'heartbreaking'
personal stories must surface before the media connects the dots to the immense profits and political capital accrued from human suffering? Apparently, a detention system built on the premise of 'illegality' struggles to acknowledge the inconvenient truth that 'we're all human' when it benefits from actively forgetting it.