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Trump's private prisons [1]

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Date: 2025-04-09

The sight of Kristie Noem at the El Salvador prison curdles my stomach. About as good as Trump walking on heroes' graves at Arlington National Cemetary.

Question: If Kristie Noem can get into the prison and out again, why is the Trump administration arguing that they can't get Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of there?

When Trump won the election I started saying that when ICE started doing roundups, they would just take everyone who spoke Spanish or had a Spanish surname. There wouldn't be a chance to do proper identification on the spot. It was snatch and figure everything out later, if ever.

I said that there would be so many people that there would be basically concentration camps, similar to or worse than the Japanese camps in World War II.

The other factor was that they would be run by private companies. That's what the Republicans love doing is farming out things to private companies so they make money. It's all about money. That's why they want to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid and let private insurers make the money by charging higher prices. The human beings involved are never a factor.

Guantanamo Bay only had space for 258 prisoners, as I remember. A waste of time and money and the time factor to build a new prison. I'll bet it was Stephen Miller's idea to use El Salvador's prisons.

But, the use of another country's prison was just a showpiece. The real goal is private prisons here.

When Trump won in 2016, the stocks of private prison companies shot upwards. The same thing happened last year when Trump won again. CoreCivic doubled in price. It also happened to Geo Group.

The stocks also rose when President Elect Trump announced Tom Himan would be his "border czar."

Geo Group noted that 43% of its revenue comes from U.S. Immigration and Enforcement contracts. CoreCivic at 30%. Besides the prisons themselves, the companies have transportation subsidiaries. Deportees and prisoners need to be moved around.

Democratic Presidents Obama and Biden told their DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons not to renew private contracts. Trump just the opposite. Trump sees a lot more people going to prison by being "tougher" on crime.

But there's way more than just housing and transportation. There is monitoring undocumented people in a community. Geo Group has a subsidiary called BI Inc. that has a contract with ICE for case management and supervision services which are part of the Intensive Supervision and Appearance Program, by phone reporting, GPS monitoring, and surveillance through SmartLINK, software that is put on a person's phone being monitored and it even uses facial recognition.

In 2023, 90% of those housed in immigrant detention were in for-profit private facilities.

There are also contracts with the U.S. Marshals service for people under their jurisdiction.

In 2022, 8% of the prison population were in private prisons. 90,873 people. It could be a booming business with Trump in power.

In 2022, there were 22 states that did not use private prisons. That means that there were 28 that did.

Karoline Leavitt just floated the idea of deporting violent American citizen criminals "if it's legal." It's not, but that won't stop the Trump administration from trying.

They will try to keep deporting people as long as it is cheaper than housing them here. The lawsuits may make Trump have second thoughts as those costs rise and take the cheapness factor out.

Then Trump will realize that private prisons, where prisoners are treated far less well than in state or federal prisons, is the way to go.

All the support structure to deal with undocumented immigrants is already available. All Trump has to do is use it to make their lives miserable.

Like the $998 a day fine, and the CBP Home app, the point is to tell them to "Go Home!"

When they don't, there are always the private prisons to house them until they beg to be deported.

That's Trump's idea of law and order.

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