Trump Admin's Migrant Cages: A Bipartisan Business Model
Newsweek reports on a 2018 lawsuit against the Trump administration for sending ICE detainees to a Louisiana state prison, alleging mistreatment. What the breathless headlines omit is that the expansion of immigration detention, often into private or state facilities, is a bipartisan project. While Trump certainly amplified it, the use of prisons for migrants wasn't invented in 2018—nor did it end
in 2020. The current administration, for instance, continues to rely heavily on this opaque, often abusive system, rubber-stamping contracts with private prison corporations that profit directly from human suffering. One might wonder why America's for-profit prison industry consistently finds new ways to fill its beds, whether with citizens or migrants. It appears that 'national security' and
'border control' conveniently align with maximizing shareholder profits. The revolving door between government contracts and corporate lobbying ensures that the demand for detention, and the lawsuits against its conditions, will continue, regardless of who occupies the White House. Some horrors, it seems, are too lucrative to ever truly disappear.