Homestead: Who's Profiting from Detaining Kids?
This is from February, and this is only Homestead, FL, so you know there's plenty to go around.
Homestead: Who’s Profiting from Detaining Kids?
Follow the money: child detention is big business in Trump's America.
By Josh Leach on February 1, 2019
Update, April 29, 2019: UUSC is part of a nationwide campaign to end child detention. You can take action by signing our coalition’s petition to close the Homestead facility, reunite kids with their relatives and sponsors, and stop the destructive practice of sharing personal information with the Department of Homeland Security that interferes with a child’s release. This campaign builds on UUSC’s efforts since 2015 to end all forms of family detention and separation at the U.S. border.
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The practice of holding immigrant kids in detention is skyrocketing in the United States, with the number of children in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody growing from less than 3,000 to nearly 15,000 in the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.
For many families, this has meant prolonged separation and trauma. For a handful of contractors, however, it means big business.
Isn’t child detention illegal?
Yes, it is. U.S. laws like the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and a binding legal agreement (the “Flores Settlement”) place strict limits on how long the government can detain immigrant children and under what conditions. The core principle of these safeguards is that the government must prioritize the best interests of the child, placing kids in the “least restrictive setting” and reunifying them with family whenever possible and consistent with their well-being.
In theory, therefore, ORR shelters were never meant to be detention camps. They were set up initially to provide temporary places to stay until unaccompanied minors can be placed into the care of their family members or other sponsors.
This began to change under the Trump administration’s notorious family separation policy, when thousands of immigrant children were taken from their parents and other relatives at the border, labeled now as “unaccompanied minors,” and warehoused in growing ORR facilities. A report this month by government inspectors found that thousands more children may have been separated under this policy than previously known.
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The Miami New Times reported on Sunday on some of the corporate actors who are making a profit from the expansion of this facility. It turns out, they are a tightly-interconnected group – many with a checkered past and close ties to the Trump administration:
Medicare fraud is a subject on which former Governor Rick Scott knows a thing or two, as he served as CEO of the Hospital Corporation of America during a federal investigation that eventually forced the company to pay what was then the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.
Incidentally, the program coordinator for Comprehensive Health Services’ ORR shelters, including Homestead, is a former employee of Hospital Corporation of America.
Comprehensive Health Services is owned by Caliburn International, a corporation founded by D.C. Capital Partners, which has close ties to former top-ranking Trump administration official John Kelly.
Defense giant General Dynamics won a contract to provide “training and technical assistance” at the Homestead facility, according to the New Times.
As the Daily Beast reported in June 2018, General Dynamics has allegedly “faced $280.3 million in penalties for 23 misconduct cases since 1995,” involving underpayment of wages and other regulatory and labor violations.
General Dynamics also has a controversial history of working with security contractor Sallyport Global, which in turn is also owned by DC Capital Partners – the John Kelly-linked firm mentioned above that created the corporation that now owns Comprehensive Health Services.
Former Trump administration defense chief Jim Mattis is also a former board member of General Dynamics.
According to the New Times, at least 14 children at the Homestead facility were transferred to an adult immigration detention center as soon as they turned 18. This detention center is owned by the GEO Group – a notorious prison and detention contractor that has been implicated in medical neglect, forced labor, and other human rights abuses at the facilities they operate.
The GEO Group has made major campaign contributions to Donald Trump, and hired a lobbyist who previously worked on behalf of Trump’s Florida golf courses, as reported in the New York Times.
This closed loop of profit and power allows a small number of corporate actors to reap enormous gains from the unlawful and immoral practice of detaining immigrant children. These policies create a powerful financial incentive to perpetuate the detention system, even when it violates human rights and U.S. law.
more...
https://www.uusc.org/homestead-whos-profiting-from-detaining-kids/?fbclid=IwAR3UATb1dtIPxF2GYK7bFcdWQDtB1NDnZEIocrbRHRxpFSmjc1mQgaPHeW0
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