This report from In the Public Interest:
Earlier this month, the Seattle City Council voted not to renew its contract with Wells Fargo, pulling more than $3 billion in city funds from the Wall Street giant. Headlines focused on the bank’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline and its recent fake account scandal. And rightly so—Wells Fargo defrauded over two million of its own customers.
But Seattle divested also because Wells Fargo bankrolls private prison companies. The city’s resolution highlighted the privately operated Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, run by GEO Group, where immigrants and refugees from across Washington State are detained as they await deportation hearings.
GEO Group and its main competitor, CoreCivic (formerly CCA), rely on financing from Wells Fargo, along with five other banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. That means Wall Street profits from deportation.
That also means what Seattle did has broader implications. Though only a fraction of the $1 trillion Wells Fargo had in deposits last year, Seattle’s money sends a message, one that rings out not only on Wall Street but also in the White House.
Trump keeps handing gifts to the private prison industry. Yesterday, new Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama administration order to end the use of private prisons for undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes. Earlier in the week, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced it would build more immigration detention centers.
It’s safe to assume GEO Group and CoreCivic will build and operate many of those centers. That’s because today’s detention system is highly privatized—65% of detention space is operated for profit. And it’s safe to assume Wall Street will provide some of the cash needed to build them.
By following the money, Seattle made that a little tougher. So did the University of California system and the cities of East Orange, NJ, and Alameda City, CA.
There are many ways to disrupt Trump’s mass deportations, from sanctuary cities to #FreedomCities, and following the money is one of them.
But bottom line: public money—our money—shouldn’t be in the hands of those profiting from deportation.
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Sincerely,
Donald Cohen
InthePublicInterest.org
65% of detention space is operated for profit…
and the operators are usually paid even they do not have full occupancy.
InthePublicInterest.org also has a report on lead in water, not just in Flint MI.
A reporter named Shane Bauer did an undercover investigation of for profit prisons and it is painfully shocking.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/reveal-episode-shane-bauer-man-inside
“The dispossessed of this nation MUST organize a revolution that would require
MORE than a statement to the larger society, MORE than street marches. There
MUST be a force that INTERRUPTS (the FLOW of capital) at some key point.”
If NOW isn’t a “key point”, what will it take?
BOYCOTT the BASTIDS, any and ALL of them!!!
(@D.R. thanks for the “Wilson” response)
Seattle is to be commended for this!
As strong as I am against the privitazation of our public schools, the privitazation of prisons goes to a place that is really so immoral and so unethical that it is just ungodly. To profit off the least of these, is repulsive to any reflective thinking person with any kind of heart.
What kind of society profits off of people who are in chains?
Oh, wait. The kind that built its economic power on slavery.
Never mind.
Even if someone’s in favour of mass deportations, why would anyone think allowing some big companies & financiers profiting at all from it was a good use of tax payer money? The whole point of doing it as a civilization via a government is to do it at economy of scale and at cost. Even someone with racist views or in favour of aggressive deportation should be wondering why they should have to pay a premium for it that’s not necessary.
And that’s not even getting into the perverse incentives. Like the “Kids for Cash” scandal… when there’s profit to be made, there comes the incentive to just lock everyone up with little priority, because it’s more about the volume for profit, not practicality or public good. That boondoggle was revealed and reviled because eventually they were locking up non-violent white middle class kids from nice neighborhoods for no other compelling reason.
I’m personally appalled by racism & hysteria, and I think everyone should have due process of law. But seems to me that, for example, even xenophobic racists who favour harsh treatment and strict deportations, should find it an objectionable use of public funds.