Private-prison companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying legislators in state capitals and in Washington, D.C. As Adam Gopnik reported in this magazine, in 2012, Corrections Corporations of America (C.C.A.), the largest for-profit prison company in the United States, has said explicitly that changes to drug laws and sentencing, as well as immigration reform, would hurt its business. A 2005 annual report from C.C.A. states:
Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.
YES. The media has failed to cover that aspect. There are for-profit entities who work and pay to maintain a criminal underclass - at the suffering of non-criminals - for their own profit. To the detriment of safety of American citizens.
And had she refused to pass the Senate Bill, she wouldāve been blamed for furthering the catastrophe at the border. The Senate recessed. So it was on her to get some relief. It is hardly perfect but it the bill was passed with 129 Dems voting yes. They were not all Blue Dogs.
I had this discussion with Greg Sargent over Twitter. He said there are a lot of good things in the Senate bill but the House bill is better. My response was that either bill would work if you had people of good faith at DHS. You have child torturing Nazis at DHS. He recognized that it was a legitimate point to raise. Without enforcement, exposure through the media how on earth can we expect the sadists who caused this situation to do the right thing now without oversight? Itās really a simple point, but Pelosi was in too much of a hurry to end this debate because she wanted to vote out her election security bill and min wage bill, both of which will not go anywhere in the US Senate.
Sure you can do thatā¦but if weāre really charged up about this issue, then about half a million of us need to march right into and through the fence and into that facility and take photos at a minimum. It doesnāt take Pelosi to lead this charge. Go ahead and set a date and let us all know. Thanks.
Sounds like Schumer enabled this as well. I single out Pelosi for criticism which is really unfair. Chuck is just as liable as she is. Neither one of them should old their leadership positions.
Senate Dems put us in a terrible position. Senate bill does absolutely nothing to hold a rogue administration accountable for cruelty. It has no provisions to ensure $$ goes to the children or that for-profit agencies are held accountable. I am a giant no vote on that bill.
ā Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) June 27, 2019
I accidentally spelled āoldā but Iām gonna leave it in.
Oh, totally agreed. Iām giving it two months or less before we start finding out that almost none of the money went to what it was intended for. And now totally legally, since Congress didnāt fence it. Totally idiotic.
She really should have stuck to her guns on this one, itās a very clear and simple message, āYou can have all the money you want for the children, but only for the children, and weāre going to make sure of thatā. But didnāt.
When Congress directs that money is spent in a certain way/on a certain program, they āfenceā the appropriation, so that the agency canāt re-direct funds from that program to something else.
By not including that, per the Senate version, DHS can now take all that money and use it pretty much as a slush fund to fund whatever they want to. And thereās no higher priority than a certain Wall thingy that Congress has previously refused to fund.
Maybe Pelosi put the welfare of those kids ahead of your assessment of her action? Thereās no reason to trash everyone at DHS as āchild torturing Nazisā. Seriously? You believe our fellow citizens and employees at DHS fit in this category? And if you do what are you doing on your keyboard instead of physically at one of those camps protesting?
Then prove this is what the Senate did with this bill instead of all of the worthless speculation going on in this conversation. If you want to dig up facts then do that without all of the conclusions based on air and speculation about how Congress āfencedā the appropriation. Youāre being as helpful as a Russian bot.
The House had planned to vote Thursday on its amended version of the border package. But roughly 18 moderates vowed to oppose the bill on the floor, according to multiple sources familiar with the whip count.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition, confirmed that multiple moderates had been planning to buck the party on a procedural vote on the floor later Thursday.
The Blue Dog Coalition has 27 members.Eighteen threatened to tank Pelosiās bill with protections. Here is a link to the 27 members:
Edit to add: I corrected the number of Blue Dog Coalition members. I had my screen on magnify and missed one column of names to the right .
The Senate bill opened up that possibility by not fencing the appropriation. Ergo, Congress has no control over how DHS chooses to spend it.
And as Trumpās been vigorously stealing funds from DoD to fund his wall, itās not idle speculation at all that heās going to do that here, but legally, and without the risk of court challenges.
DHS enforced the policy that Trump/Miller want. Whether every individual is a committed Trumper or not, the net effect is that the entire DHS w/ICE and CBP has enforced this policy and caused this problem. These poor kids are in this mess because of them. Every time someone at DHS gets a conscience and decides to abide the law and stop the extremist actions, Miller fires them and replaces them with someone more extreme. We gave him more money to play with, some nice words on a piece of paper which he will ignore, and no way to truly supervise him. How on earth is that a good result? Weāre depending on Miller to allow DHS folks to do the right thing without the arm of Congress or the exposure of the media to prod them. How likely is that to work out? Could we have done more to get some accountability into this bill when weāve known about the problem for several weeks? I think so.
When are our fearless congressional leaders going to make an unannounced visit? iād love to see a photo of them being turned away at the prison gate!
The Senate bill passed 84-8 (6 Dems and 2 Republicans against). It also calls for $145 million to go to the Pentagon to aid with border control:
When virtually every Democrat in the Senate says āAYEā- thereās not much the House Speaker can work with. By-the-way, the mainstream media is framing this solely as a Humanitarian Aid bill when it is a Defense spending bill WITH humanitarian aid.
