It is so tempting to try to be angry about everything all the time. I appreciate that through AC's reporting I can stay focused on the thing that I most want to never happen again.
GEO Group is a public company. Can pressure be brought on shareholders? Are there any who could speak up at annual meeting? Can their profits from ICE specifically be determined or reliably estimated from their SEC filings and put at the center of an ad blitz or publicity campaign? What questions have analysts raised on their quarterly earnings calls and how were these answered? I’ve wondered for months why this angle hasn’t gotten much attention that I’ve seen. At least you’d think there’d be protesters outside their HQ.
These are concentration camps. Private prisons are for profit, which means no real incentive to provide even basic needs. You can bet that Trump will never set foot in that place. Congress will never muster the courage to do anything about it. Well, the Republican will not allow any bill to pass that forces change. Private prisons are a racket getting massive contracts for services they don’t provide. They’ve thrown Core Civic out of Alabama, which is remarkable considering the state of Alabama’s prisons.
Thanks so much for covering this. Just want to add that a large number of volunteers and local and national advocacy groups have been on the ground since Delaney re-opened in 2025. Of course Fox News has labeled most of those folks "agitators" and the loosely organized efforts an $800+ m "project" of Soros et al. Without the attention the volunteers and protesters have generated and support they've provided to detainees and their families, the Delaney story wouldn't be getting the attention it deserves.
Thank you, Adrian. I follow @flowerinspanish on Instagram, and she has been posting about the hunger strike. Sometimes all anyone has is their own body. For this administration, it is very much for my friends everything and for my enemies the law. I hope the detained survive this. I hope we all do.
It sounds like Delany hall is becoming today's version of what happened in the twin cities this past winter. I am from just north of MPLS and was privy to the local reporting of Ice activities then which I then felt compelled to tell others at The Bulwark. Being that this is in the New York area, I'm sure there is a lot of coverage there that we aren't privy to. (around the country) This situation at Delany Hall sounds so similar to that in Texas. The only difference is there are mostly children under 18 there. CBS's Jim Axelrod reported on that for Sunday Morning and I was surprised his report made it thru the Weiss/ Bilton regime.
Horrific conditions imposed on vulnerable people, and the woman deported to the Congo? Wow, beyond cruel to someone who had already suffered enough.
I really hate Stephen Milller and all of those creeps in the White House. I look forward to seeing them reap what they have sown. The Dems better prosecute and put them in prisons akin to these nasty places. Most of these people do not, nor have ever, belonged in jail. Now here they are being guarded by maga freaks who enjoy watching them suffer?
Ugh, this is disturbing beyond belief that our own government is doing this to human beings. Who have we become? Our nation needs a national divorce, I know I do not want to live within this current "government" or whatever this is, it's shameful and cruel and constantly chaotic.
Vote Blue all the way down the ballot. Republicans have lost their moral compass and are wrecking the country pretty hard. We are in a war that we started, food prices have gone up, gas is waaay up, energy prices continue to skyrocket and the insanely cruel stuff going on with immigrants is just sickening. Racism is running rampant again, people are mouthy with it - how did that even happen? Ugh, it's been insanely bad since repubs took office. I know I will never trust them in charge again.
More needs to be said about detention. MAGA is less than 25% of the country and the rest of us do not agree. We want an immigration bill and need the workers and help. Old people need care, farms need workers, kids should not be in detention, we need our service workers - and they contribute taxes! And the $1B Geo Group got is just a small piece of this stupidity that is bankrupting the country. Then there is CoreCivic, Mars, Musk, Bezos, Oracle, Palantir. Palantir is just as bad as they continue to store information on all of us. Only a POTUS like Trump would push a sick agenda like this. But Ginni and the Heritage Foundation continue pushing Project 2025 - does she understand that Clarence can't produce a white blond child with blue eyes?
Let’s also give credit to New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. This is indeed a concentration camp and many in New Jersey want to see this closed down. The reality is that we are all parts of families that emigrated from somewhere else. Native Americans, who have been here the longest, have been treated shamefully when they should have been respected.
How does Mikie Sherrill deserve credit for anything. She sent her police to assist ICE in putting down the protest! Please. If Sherrill wants to do something useful she could task the NJSP with documenting ICE abuses, investigating ICE criminality, identifying criminal ICE agents and arresting and prosecuting them.
Gov Sherrill has done alot right and some things wrong. The latest wrong was sending in the state police. The latest right was increasing the budget for immigrant detention legal services from $8.2m to $20m.
I read that the state troopers had been replaced with the city police. I learned during the George Floyd riots, a demonstration disbanded in Montgomery, AL, after a barrier was erected in front of the Capitol building and manned by unarmed police with no riot gear and after the mayor and Chief of Police talked with them. One person was arrested because she stayed while the other protesters dispersed. If police show up prepared for violence, they incite violence. Leave them alone and have enough police there to control the crowd, not chase them away. The pepper spray incident just created more problems. Bad judgment on the part of law enforcement.
With last night's Senate funding package, ICE/CBP now enjoy a total budget of well over $200 billion.
Less than the bare minimum of it is being spent to ensure the well-being of those the masked enforcers of the rising US police state seize and incarcerate. Foul water, starvation rations, the denial of basic medical care, stinking overcrowded detention cells, brutality, misery--those don't cost much. The gloating violation of fundamental constitutional, civil and human rights is 100% free of cost. What a bargain!
That $200 billion plus is being used to recruit an army of masked, violent, post-constitutional enforcers, with the considerable balance divvied up among a multitude of grifters, private prison CEOs, and cronies of Republican politicians.
It is not being spent to create a rational, effective, lawful immigration infrastructure: it sure is not.
As a purely practical, budgetary matter, private prisons for detention of people over civil violations is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive. Taxpayers, demand better of our congress (even if they’re not susceptible to moral and civil rights reasoning)
We must call these what they are: concentration camps. Language is so important, and the soft euphemisms allow the general public to remain on the sidelines, to go about their lives as though these sites are just a part of the bureaucratic immigration enforcement process. We fear and avoid hyperbole correctly, but in erring too far on the side of caution we are failing in this 1942-equivalent moment in the United States.
It is so tempting to try to be angry about everything all the time. I appreciate that through AC's reporting I can stay focused on the thing that I most want to never happen again.
GEO Group is a public company. Can pressure be brought on shareholders? Are there any who could speak up at annual meeting? Can their profits from ICE specifically be determined or reliably estimated from their SEC filings and put at the center of an ad blitz or publicity campaign? What questions have analysts raised on their quarterly earnings calls and how were these answered? I’ve wondered for months why this angle hasn’t gotten much attention that I’ve seen. At least you’d think there’d be protesters outside their HQ.
These are concentration camps. Private prisons are for profit, which means no real incentive to provide even basic needs. You can bet that Trump will never set foot in that place. Congress will never muster the courage to do anything about it. Well, the Republican will not allow any bill to pass that forces change. Private prisons are a racket getting massive contracts for services they don’t provide. They’ve thrown Core Civic out of Alabama, which is remarkable considering the state of Alabama’s prisons.
Thanks so much for covering this. Just want to add that a large number of volunteers and local and national advocacy groups have been on the ground since Delaney re-opened in 2025. Of course Fox News has labeled most of those folks "agitators" and the loosely organized efforts an $800+ m "project" of Soros et al. Without the attention the volunteers and protesters have generated and support they've provided to detainees and their families, the Delaney story wouldn't be getting the attention it deserves.
Excellent reporting. Thank you Adrian. When people say it's going to get uglier this summer, I can't help but think of the "detention centers."
Thank you. Yes, as it gets warmer I think of places like this and the people in them.
Those protesters at Delaney are doing God's work
Thank you, Adrian. I follow @flowerinspanish on Instagram, and she has been posting about the hunger strike. Sometimes all anyone has is their own body. For this administration, it is very much for my friends everything and for my enemies the law. I hope the detained survive this. I hope we all do.
Thanks for your comment, Sherri. Yes she’s great on Instagram by the way!
It sounds like Delany hall is becoming today's version of what happened in the twin cities this past winter. I am from just north of MPLS and was privy to the local reporting of Ice activities then which I then felt compelled to tell others at The Bulwark. Being that this is in the New York area, I'm sure there is a lot of coverage there that we aren't privy to. (around the country) This situation at Delany Hall sounds so similar to that in Texas. The only difference is there are mostly children under 18 there. CBS's Jim Axelrod reported on that for Sunday Morning and I was surprised his report made it thru the Weiss/ Bilton regime.
The detention center in Tacoma near where I live is also horrendous. The Geo Group runs this facility too.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/immigration-news/geo-group-lawsuit-northwest-ice-processing-center/281-a41284cb-4ca4-4cc2-8bda-69e94c952358
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article315346266.html
Horrific conditions imposed on vulnerable people, and the woman deported to the Congo? Wow, beyond cruel to someone who had already suffered enough.
I really hate Stephen Milller and all of those creeps in the White House. I look forward to seeing them reap what they have sown. The Dems better prosecute and put them in prisons akin to these nasty places. Most of these people do not, nor have ever, belonged in jail. Now here they are being guarded by maga freaks who enjoy watching them suffer?
Ugh, this is disturbing beyond belief that our own government is doing this to human beings. Who have we become? Our nation needs a national divorce, I know I do not want to live within this current "government" or whatever this is, it's shameful and cruel and constantly chaotic.
Vote Blue all the way down the ballot. Republicans have lost their moral compass and are wrecking the country pretty hard. We are in a war that we started, food prices have gone up, gas is waaay up, energy prices continue to skyrocket and the insanely cruel stuff going on with immigrants is just sickening. Racism is running rampant again, people are mouthy with it - how did that even happen? Ugh, it's been insanely bad since repubs took office. I know I will never trust them in charge again.
Thank you, Adrian, for keeping all of these atrocities in view. Truly important work. We must not look away.
Thanks so much for reading Marybeth
I cried while reading this. I hate that this is being done in our name. Thank you, as always, for your excellent reporting, Adrian.
Sometimes that happens but it means we’re keeping our humanity when things like this bother us so much. Thank you for reading Sophia!
The conditions at these detention centers are horrible. Thank you for your reporting
More needs to be said about detention. MAGA is less than 25% of the country and the rest of us do not agree. We want an immigration bill and need the workers and help. Old people need care, farms need workers, kids should not be in detention, we need our service workers - and they contribute taxes! And the $1B Geo Group got is just a small piece of this stupidity that is bankrupting the country. Then there is CoreCivic, Mars, Musk, Bezos, Oracle, Palantir. Palantir is just as bad as they continue to store information on all of us. Only a POTUS like Trump would push a sick agenda like this. But Ginni and the Heritage Foundation continue pushing Project 2025 - does she understand that Clarence can't produce a white blond child with blue eyes?
Let’s also give credit to New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. This is indeed a concentration camp and many in New Jersey want to see this closed down. The reality is that we are all parts of families that emigrated from somewhere else. Native Americans, who have been here the longest, have been treated shamefully when they should have been respected.
How does Mikie Sherrill deserve credit for anything. She sent her police to assist ICE in putting down the protest! Please. If Sherrill wants to do something useful she could task the NJSP with documenting ICE abuses, investigating ICE criminality, identifying criminal ICE agents and arresting and prosecuting them.
Gov Sherrill has done alot right and some things wrong. The latest wrong was sending in the state police. The latest right was increasing the budget for immigrant detention legal services from $8.2m to $20m.
I read that the state troopers had been replaced with the city police. I learned during the George Floyd riots, a demonstration disbanded in Montgomery, AL, after a barrier was erected in front of the Capitol building and manned by unarmed police with no riot gear and after the mayor and Chief of Police talked with them. One person was arrested because she stayed while the other protesters dispersed. If police show up prepared for violence, they incite violence. Leave them alone and have enough police there to control the crowd, not chase them away. The pepper spray incident just created more problems. Bad judgment on the part of law enforcement.
With last night's Senate funding package, ICE/CBP now enjoy a total budget of well over $200 billion.
Less than the bare minimum of it is being spent to ensure the well-being of those the masked enforcers of the rising US police state seize and incarcerate. Foul water, starvation rations, the denial of basic medical care, stinking overcrowded detention cells, brutality, misery--those don't cost much. The gloating violation of fundamental constitutional, civil and human rights is 100% free of cost. What a bargain!
That $200 billion plus is being used to recruit an army of masked, violent, post-constitutional enforcers, with the considerable balance divvied up among a multitude of grifters, private prison CEOs, and cronies of Republican politicians.
It is not being spent to create a rational, effective, lawful immigration infrastructure: it sure is not.
As a purely practical, budgetary matter, private prisons for detention of people over civil violations is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive. Taxpayers, demand better of our congress (even if they’re not susceptible to moral and civil rights reasoning)
We must call these what they are: concentration camps. Language is so important, and the soft euphemisms allow the general public to remain on the sidelines, to go about their lives as though these sites are just a part of the bureaucratic immigration enforcement process. We fear and avoid hyperbole correctly, but in erring too far on the side of caution we are failing in this 1942-equivalent moment in the United States.