If you want to understand what is happening inside the U.S. detention system right now, you have to stop looking at the slogans and start following the money.
The federal government has poured tens of billions into immigration detention, expanded the number of facilities at breakneck speed, and helped entrench private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group even further into the machinery of enforcement.
Behind them sit some of the largest financial firms in the world, holding major stakes, while immigrants with no criminal convictions fill detention beds and deaths in custody rise.
Meanwhile, the same administration escalating this crackdown is also starving farms, trucking, and other sectors of the immigrant labor that keep the economy moving.
