Undocumented immigrants do not endanger the safety, writ large, of U.S. citizens, as shown by U.S. statistics on violent crimes. The tiny portion of undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes is nonetheless used to justify inhumane treatment, such as the threat of deportation, toward all.
And keeping people and families in detention centers, however long, before deporting them is a further outrage. Detention centers are concentration camps, pure and simple, known for their disgusting and cruel conditions.
According to the news source The Lever, the Republican administration just gave one of Trump’s key corporate donors a 15-year, $1.2 billion contract to reopen a previously shuttered ICE detention center in New Jersey. The CEO of the private prison contractor, GEO Group, told investors afterward that the company expects as much as $1 billion in additional annual revenues from this facility alone.
Mass deportations won’t solve the country’s immigration problems, nor will it make us safer, on the whole. But for Trump’s friends in the prison business, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Deb Friedman
Easthampton