{"id":250997,"date":"2016-06-20T20:39:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T20:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=250997"},"modified":"2016-06-20T23:37:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T23:37:28","slug":"u-s-study-finds-immigrants-imprisoned-boost-prison-corporation-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/u-s-study-finds-immigrants-imprisoned-boost-prison-corporation-profits\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Study Finds Immigrants Imprisoned to Boost Prison-Corporation Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

93% of the people who are locked up in the U.S. in order to meet the minimum legal requirements for the number of people who must be locked up on possible violations of U.S. immigration laws, are locked in for-profit prisons, which are owned by corporations that heavily fund a few politicians, including Hillary Clinton.<\/span><\/p>\n

That 93% finding was published on June 20th, in a study by the Center for Constitutional Rights, titled,\u00a0\u201cBanking on Detention: Local Lockup Quotas and the Immigrant Dragnet\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghita Schwartz, Senior Staff Attorney for CCR, said, in releasing the report: \u201cAlmost all guaranteed minimums are\u00a0found in facilities that contract with\u00a0private prison companies, and ICE\u00a0[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]\u00a0actively collaborates with these\u00a0companies to keep details of their\u00a0contracts secret.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On 28 April 2015, the Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0published<\/span><\/a>\u00a0an article, “How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is\u00a0talking about: Sen. Marco Rubio is one of the biggest beneficiaries.\u201d It failed to include one crucial fact: Hillary Clinton is the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 6 October 2015, Vice News revealed that fact when they headlined\u00a0\u201cHow Private Prisons Are Profiting from Locking Up US Immigrants\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and showed that Hillary Clinton was by far the top recipient of funds from Corrections Corporation of America, and that Marco Rubio was by far the top recipient from the other of the industry\u2019s giants, GEO Group, and that both candidates had raked in around the same total amounts from the industry. Furthermore: “The political contributions are the\u00a0visible tip of the iceberg of the\u00a0influence these folks wield.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, U.S. immigration policies are highly shaped by corruption. Large corporations and their board members and their PACS don\u2019t invest this money for nothing. They\u2019re good at business. They\u2019re buying policy, and the people who write and implement policy are basically their employees \u2014 just on the government\u2019s payroll (and in order to get onto the government\u2019s payroll, these politicians need those campaign contributions). After retirement from the government, government officials get hired by what libertarians naively call \u2018the productive economy\u2019 (other institutions that are as beholden to the big-money people as the government itself is). It\u2019s like a person\u2019s being hired by different subsidiaries of the same corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the reason why 93% of the people who are locked up in the U.S. in order to meet the minimum legal requirements for the number of people who must be locked up on possible violations of U.S. immigration laws, are locked in for-profit prisons, which are owned by corporations that heavily fund a few politicians. It\u2019s simply good business. Rotten government is good for the businesses that invest in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this is the reason why, as The Nation<\/i> headlined on 13 August 2014,\u00a0\u201cThe US Keeps 34,000 Immigrants in Detention Each Day Simply to\u00a0Meet a Quota\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, The Nation<\/i>, since it\u2019s a Democratic Party propaganda-sheet (just like, for example, National Review<\/i> is a Republican one) headlined on 8 February 2016, \u201cThe Democratic Presidential Candidates Would End Private Prison Contracts:<\/span><\/a> A Nation investigation found startling medical neglect inside privatized, immigrant-only federal prisons. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton say they would end these, and all, private prison contracts.\u201d However, the top people at that magazine aren\u2019t really<\/i> so naive as to believe<\/i> that this would be the case if Clinton becomes their nominee. They\u2019re just pretending to believe her words. They might try to find hires who are dumb enough to comply, if the hires aren\u2019t themselves writing what they don\u2019t really believe. That\u2019s the way the ‘journalism’ game is played: the public be damned. And that way, for example, even a President as bad as Obama can still be praised, and so can such a catastrophically bad Secretary of State<\/span><\/a> as Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best thing that can be said about Donald Trump is that the Republican Party hates his guts and calls him a \u201cfascist.\u201d<\/span><\/a> The second-best thing is that Trump has no record in public office and there\u2019s thus no way of knowing what his policies really would be. What\u2019s the best thing that can be said about Hillary Clinton? That she condemns some of the stupid things that Trump says? But why should one believe either<\/i> person? Has either of them earned<\/i> belief on the part of the public? Hillary has earned belief on the part of her mega-donors, but, has either of the two prospective nominees earned belief on the part of the public<\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n

Such facts as \u201cThe US Keeps 34,000 Immigrants in Detention Each Day Simply to\u00a0Meet a Quota\u201d<\/span><\/a> are merely symptoms<\/i> of problems that run to the foundation of today\u2019s America. The only prominent politician who has even been talking<\/i> about those problems is Bernie Sanders, and his actual record in public office is remarkably close to his public rhetoric. That\u2019s why I am hoping that his campaign for the White House will continue until November 8th \u2014 even if he then is no longer a \u2018Democrat\u2019. My vote can\u2019t be bought or sold. It\u2019s based entirely on a person\u2019s record in public office \u2014 and only<\/i> on that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse 93% of the people who are locked up in the U.S. in order to meet the minimum legal requirements for the number of people who must be locked up on possible violations of U.S. immigration laws, are locked in for-profit prisons, which are owned by corporations that heavily fund a few politicians, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":250998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461],"tags":[115,30,1036,96,698,753,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-250997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-hillary-clinton","14":"tag-police-state","15":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}