It's not surprising that there is a corporate grift buried not too far below the surface of Jeff Sessions' "zero tolerance" policy for asylum-seeking refugees. Of course there is. That is the point of private prisons in general.
You might be more surprised that one of the biggest private detention companies in the nation (and the operator of numerous ICE detention centers) isn't just a big Republican donor, but the top donor to three different Texas Congressmen: John Culberson (R), John Carter (R), and Henry Cuellar (D). And that's not all.
GEO has also donated to other Texas lawmakers, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who received $10,000; House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who received $2,500; Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, who received $2,500; Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, who received $1,000; and Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Heath, who received $1,000. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz received $150.
Democrat Henry Cuellar defends taking GEO money because the company is one of the top employers in his district, which you can take or leave as you like. That $150 for Ted Cruz is a little odd; not sure if they were trying to influence Ted or just buy him coffee.
Whatever the case, the largess of the private prison industry in spreading their political donations can make for some hefty returns: the taxpayer costs for detaining just one child is around $775 per night. And in the wake of justice reforms undertaken before Attorney Jeff Sessions joined the scene, private prisons had been urgently looking for new streams of revenue—or to translate, they’ve been needing to find more prisoners. Even before the new “zero tolerance” policy was announced, the Trump administration was taking steps to place more U.S. prisoners in for-profit private prisons.
For the record, and not that it should matter, a new University of Texas poll for the Texas Tribune finds that Texas voters oppose Trump's child separation policy by a 2-to-1 margin. Also for the record, though, those numbers are influenced by the whopping 83 percent of Democrats who are opposed to the international human rights crime; only 35 percent of Texas Republicans oppose it.
And it's the Tea Party branch of Republicans that favor it the most, presumably because something something economic anxiety. The slightly revised Trump executive order signed earlier this week alters the arrangement so that parents and children can be imprisoned together, but does not change the number of people who will be, on Trump administration orders, incarcerated.
Surely we can do better than a policy of indefinitely imprisoning asylum-seeking families over misdemeanor paperwork crimes in an act whose only world benefit is goosing the profit margins of that small scrap of humanity that thinks to themselves "what I truly want to do with my life is found and operate a for-profit prison." Surely.
Stopping Trump’s malevolent policies can only happen we take back the House. Can you give $1 to elect a Democrat in each Daily Kos-targeted House district?