by Joseph Rosen
U.S. immigrant detention prisons hold captive more than 40,000 men, women, and children daily.
Though most have never been charged with a crime, detainees are bound by shackles or handcuffs and forced to endure inhumane conditions including cavity searches, solitary confinement, physical and sexual abuse. By law, undocumented immigrants are denied a public legal defender. On average, a person will spend nearly a month in detention. Many individuals, torn from their family and friends, spend months and years awaiting freedom.
More than 37,000 immigrants are detained each year at sites across Louisiana. As is the case nationally, for-profit prisons handle the vast majority of this awful “business.” The GEO Group, the world’s largest for-profit prison company, runs major detention centers in Jena, Pine Prairie, Basile, and Alexandria, LA. The deplorable conditions at prisons run by the GEO Group have been met with prisoner uprisings and hunger strikes across the world, from Louisiana to South Africa.
Tens of millions of dollars in bribes by for-profit prison companies have been lavished on Congress. In return they get laws that actually say that ICE must meet “bed quotas.” And compared with other capitalist enterprises, GEO Group enjoys extraordinary profits, largely due to the unpaid labor of its detainees, 60,000 of whom are seeking damages for having been forced to work for free under the threat of solitary confinement. Last October, at an annual leadership conference held at Trump’s Miami-area golf resort, GEO Group executives celebrated an annual revenue of $2.26 billion, double that “earned” ten years ago.
Workers should recognize these racist concentration camps for what they are and demand full legalization for every one of our immigrant brothers and sisters; history will pardon nothing less.