‘If you build it, they will come.’ This is the famous line from the movie Field of Dreams where a voice calls out from a wheat field urging the Kevin Coster’s character to build a baseball diamond. Wouldn’t it be great if our country went on a building spree to build baseball fields instead of detention centers.
I like the fact that baseball fields are called diamonds, suggesting an indefinable value, almost spiritual, a sacred place for healing, a place for fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters to reconnect, heal.
But there is another building spree happening right now. The administration isn’t even trying to hide it anymore. We are careening toward a police state, spearheaded by the escalation of detention center construction.
If you build it they will come, but not voluntarily.
These are not healing centers, unlike baseball diamonds. Children are separated from their parents, detainees are raped, starved, denied medical care and legal representation. Food is minimal, often spoiled. Presently, there is a hunger strike occurring in the New Jersey facility protesting the inhumane conditions. Suppressive regimes are the ones who produce hunger strikes, not America.
ICE has had plenty of time to remove all the hardened criminals. Some estimates show that 70% of detainees have no criminal record. What are we doing here? A few months ago they arrested a 90 year old man, dragged him out of his house with only his underwear and a pajama top into the frigid zero degree weather in Minnesota.
I feel so much safer now.
You think Renee Good was a threat to national security, that mother of three who was executed in broad daylight by ICE? Was Jeffrey Pretti a threat to our Democracy? The only difference I see between Hitler’s SS and ICE is the fact that the SS didn’t wear masks. Both violently roused people out of their homes without legal authority.
The Trump administration is presently constructing hundreds of private detention centers, as well as acquiring more land for future detention construction.
If you build it, they will come, though not voluntarily.
They wouldn’t be building all these detention facilities if they didn’t intend to fill them. As with the Third Reich, they will soon lock up people who protest, people who disagree, people who don’t conform. They will lock up the artists, gay people, and brown and black skin individuals. They will use the Dept. of Justice as an instrument of suppression and control, and to go after Trump’s enemies, in direct contrast to the DOJ’s stated mission. “Ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” ICE has a daily quota of 3000 arrests, They ain’t locking up many white dudes. As a matter of fact, they are pardoning the white dudes, witness the mass pardon of Jan 6th insurrectionists.
As with any cesspool of corruption, there is always the money trail.
“Private prison corporations’ perverse incentive to profit off of the prolonged imprisonment of Black, brown, and Indigenous immigrants is foundational to the immigration detention system. In fact, in the 1980’s, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic), successfully lobbied the government to expand detention and other forms of incarceration. “
Here’s just a few numbers from the last fiscal year. CoreCivic: Reported a total full-year revenue of $2.2 billion with net profits of $116.5 million.
GEO Group: Reported a total annualized revenue of $2.5 billion with a company-record profit of $254 million, representing a roughly 700% increase over the previous year
Local county governments also profit immensely from sheriff’s office agreements to jail immigrants on behalf of the federal government.”
And here is some of the horror stories oozing out of the detention centers:
“Data and recordings from more than a hundred 911 calls at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, along with interviews and court filings, offer a disturbing portrait of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition, and emotional distress. Current and former detainees describe a camp where about 3,000 people have lived per day in loud and unsanitary quarters. They say detainees struggle to obtain health care as disease spreads, lose weight because of a lack of food, and fear security guards known to use force to put down disturbances.” AP
Years ago in Philadelphia, the state spent sixty million on private prison contracts in lieu of pouring that money into education. A common denominator to both criminals and drug addicts is illiteracy. Philadelphia decided to invest in prisons, not education, thereby harvesting future criminals, or clients, to fill the prison beds, created by an underfunded educational system, coupled with the gutting of social services. This cruel allocation of money reaped its inevitable harvest of criminals, not scholars.
“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Thomas Jefferson
But beds needed to be filled, and the the private prisons had clauses in their contracts where they could bill the state for empty beds and the state, not wanting that expense, used any means necessary to filled those beds.
And today, this administration has shut down the Dept. of Education. Like I said, they ain’t hiding it anymore.
“Two years after the Governor and State Legislature cut nearly $1 billion from education, they’ve decided to start pumping money back in…to prisons
Districts in all four counties have raised local property taxes, some for the third straight year, but that has not been enough. Statewide, 70% of public school districts have raised property taxes while furloughing tens of thousands of teachers and 3 out of 4 school districts plan to reduce instructional programming. As State Rep. Bizzarro points out in the Erie Times-News, we can’t blame this on a lack of federal stimulus money. “The state budget finds money to make up for federal cuts affecting the Corrections Department to the tune of $187 million. In fact, expired federal funds were replaced almost dollar for dollar with state funds for other agencies. However, this has not been done for education.”
https://childrenfirstpa.org/category/education/
We now have our latest growth industry: detention construction, a blight that is eroding our Democracy . Like I said, if you build it, ICE will fill those beds. The installation of Fascism is dependent on the illiteracy of its citizens. Democracy’s foundation is constructed on it’s citizens to be educated and critical thinkers. Otherwise, demigods will high-jack our Democracy.
RESIST!
We are beholden to the brave people of Minnesota who didn’t back down when their city was under siege by ICE. We should all be inspired by their courage, their resiliency and their refusal to bend to the hammer of fascism.
Curt
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