Private Companies Are Cashing in on ICE's Detention Centers
When employees at Wayfair, a swanky furniture and interior decorating company, discovered earlier this month that they had unknowingly been responsible for providing bedding to immigrant detention centers run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they demanded that executives break off ties with the agency. When the higher-ups refused, the employees staged a walk-out in Boston.
It's a strange disconnect, that this company that sells accent chairs and floral-patterned credenzas was connected to the latest iteration of American concentration camps. But the truth is that there's a lot of money to make in the immigrant detention business, and plenty of the companies cashing in are household names.
The detention system in the U.S. sprawls across the country and falls under multiple federal agencies at once. Migrants apprehended at the border are first held in processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection, and, eventually, they're transferred to detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Adults and minors traveling together are sent to family detention centers, also run by ICE. Minors traveling alone who can be safely returned to their home countries are deported. If they can't return safely, then they're sent to shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). While CBP and ICE are both agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, the ORR is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
It's a lot to keep track of, and it's even more byzantine because each of these agencies relies on different companies for contract services. ORR, for example, contracts the nonprofit Heartland Human Services to run five shelters in the Chicago area for approximately 400 unaccompanied children. Despite the "nonprofit" designation, these companies are still making a lot of profit from these arrangements. Southwest Key Programs, another nonprofit that runs shelters for Health and Human Services, made $955 million just since 2015. Its former CEO resigned last year when it became public that he earned $1.5 million in 2016—the Washington Post confirmed this week that he earned $3.6 million in 2017.
The majority of detained migrants are in ICE custody. In 2018, ICE reportedly had 41,134 people in detention, an increase of more than 10,000 from the year before, according to Reuters. As many as 72 percent of those people are held in privately owned facilities, according to data from the Urban Justice Center's Corrections Accountability Project, mostly managed by two massive companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, which in 2017 earned a combined $985 million from contracts with ICE. In These Times has meticulously documented companies profiting from immigrant detention: "The corporations get paid whether the beds are full or not, arguably providing government an incentive to seek out prisoners so as not to 'waste money.'"
Until this year, both GEO Group and CoreCivic received massive investments from some of the biggest banks in the U.S., including Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America. Since Trump's election, investment in the private prison industry skyrocketed, with banks supplying substantial capital. Chase alone provided a $13 million loan to CoreCivic and gave more than $250 million in revolving credit to both corporations. In response to public pressure, all three banks have pulled out of the private prison game, choosing to let their existing contracts expire without renewing them.
Private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic are responsible for both construction and management of facilities, but, like in prisons, many services within a detention center are also handled by private contractors. Phone companies, for one, can charge prisoners as much as $25 for a 15-minute phone call. In immigrant detention centers, the largest telephone service providers are Talton Communications and Securus Technologies, which according to the Texas Tribune actually provides detainees with free legal calls, but in exchange for forcing them to call loved ones using pre-paid debit cards and collect calls. Transportation is another major business opportunity, with companies providing vans and buses to move detainees from one facility to another. ICE was transporting detainees via American Airlines until the company asked the agency to stop, again in response to public pressure.
The list continues: Health care, ankle monitoring, drug testing, food services, all of them are outsourced to companies through lucrative contracts. Many detainees have to use for-profit money transfers, like Western Union or Global Tel Link, to pay for all kinds of services. Dell, HP, Microsoft, and the security company Palantir all provide technical support for the detention centers. Meals come from food services company Aramark, which has been accused of serving detainees maggot-infested food.
There's no shortage of ways for private companies to cash in on the migrant detention system. And as the number of people held in custody by ICE, CBP, and ORR continues to grow thanks to the Trump administration's aggressive border policies, the number of companies profiting off of their imprisonment, and the size of the profits themselves, are only going to grow as well. Through immigration policy, the U.S. has deliberately created a completely captive revenue stream, and U.S. corporations would be fools not to take advantage of it.
Originally Appeared on GQ
