Baptist Child & Family Services, Southwest Key, and International Educational Services are all big beneficiaries of the growing need to house, feed, and detain immigrant children either separated from their families by our inhumane immigration policies or come to this country alone for the hope of sanctuary. According to a new analysis by the Associated Press, the immigration detention industry is now over a $1 billion a year industry—ten times what it was only 10 years ago.
Over the past decade, by far the largest recipients of taxpayer money have been Southwest Key and Baptist Child & Family Services, AP’s analysis shows. From 2008 to date, Southwest Key has received $1.39 billion in grant funding to operate shelters; Baptist Child & Family Services has received $942 million.
A Texas-based organization called International Educational Services also was a big recipient, landing more than $72 million in the last fiscal year before folding amid a series of complaints about the conditions in its shelters.
According to the New York Times, Southwest Key has pulled in $955,000 by itself since 2015. But there are new “players” in the field—more military-minded.
But several large defense contractors and security firms are also building a presence in the system, including General Dynamics, the global aerospace and defense company, and MVM Inc., which until 2008 contracted with the government to supply guards in Iraq. MVM recently put up job postings seeking “bilingual travel youth care workers” in the McAllen area of South Texas. It described the jobs as providing care to immigrant children “while you are accompanying them on domestic flights and via ground transportation to shelters all over the country.”
And while for many years the only children being housed were children who came by themselves to the border, that has all changed since Donald Trump and Attorney Jeff Sessions decided to push forth with their more fascistic “zero tolerance” policy of separating detained immigrant families. The results have meant a lot of very suspicious uses of facilities not previously meant for such large capacities. But with our current government, the oversight of how well these third-party contractors are handling the scaling up of their booming businesses, is seemingly nonexistent.
And for every insipid media profile on how “nice” and “pleasant” a facility may be when they allow the cameras to walk through the sections they want them to see; not having your parents or a family atmosphere means these children are in a nice jail, or orphanage. That’s how it affects them psychologically. That’s why we do not have orphanages in our country anymore—only in old time novels.