Everyday Erinyes

I have a situation today which seems to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with it. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

I'm sure that no one is unaware that a little over a week ago (on June 23, to be precise) the Supreme Court, being deadlocked on the case of United States v Texas, allowed a ruling of a lower court to stand, in effect overturning executive orders of President Obama to expand DACA and DAPA.  That alphabet soup stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (and Lawful Permanent Residents).  Both of those programs, and all of President Obama's executive actions to expand tham, have been aimed at keeping families together.  It's hardly worth even mentioning that the objections to these measures have come from the party of so-called "family values."  That is now a given.

The case did not involve, so the split decision doesn't affect, the original DACA of 2012.  Anyone eligible for that should continue to apply, including for renewal.  But expanded DACA, and all of DAPA, is gone for now.

Let me put a face on this.  Josefina Mora is an American citizen, old enough to vote for the first time.  Here mother, Maru Mora Villalpando, is not.  She is just a parent of an American citizen.  Democracy Now spoke with both:

VILLALPANDO: Thank you. Well, it keeps me the same as I’ve been in these past 20 years: trying to avoid police, ensuring that my daughter knows everywhere I go, creating a network that will support me in case I get detained and placed in deportation proceedings….

MORA: I’m 18. I just turned 18, so I’ll be 19 this year. I participated in that rally [a Trump rally in Washington State at which she was arrested] because I wanted my community to know that we will not allow bigotry to be in our community, because more—it’s bigger than the Trump campaign, really. It’s just representing a country that’s founded on hate, on racism, on the taking of native peoples’ land.

If none of this, nor any similar stories, moves you in the slightest; if you think anyone who "breaks a law" – any law – needs to be locked up and the key thrown away, please just take a second to consider how many and who would be locked up, or have been locked up, if that were put into practice.  Jesus.  All of the barons who got King John to sign the Magna Carta.  Ummm – all of our founding fathers.  Thoreau.  Gandhi.  Most if not all of the civil rights activists in the sixties and seventies.  And, of course great numbers of people who have escaped being locked up because of their wealth and prestige.  George W. Bush.  Dick Cheney  Donald Rumsfeld.  All those Nixon aides who invented the War on Drugs as a ploy to lock up decent people.  And, of course, Donald J. Trump.  Is that going to happen?  Should we not be consistent?

But beyond fairness, there is an additional factor that I suspect few are aware of.  All those immigration prisons?  The ones not under the supervision of DOJ or the Bureau of Prisons, but of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)?  The agency subject to a 2009 congressional mandate to keep no fewer than 34,000 people locked up at all times?  Oh, you didn't know that?  Well, a new report is out prepared jointly by the Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights on this.  It expands on their 2015 report with additional information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

After noting that the "detention bed quota," as it is known, is "unethical and financially wasteful, costing American taxpayers over $2 billion a year and separating hundreds of thousands of families," it goes on to state (emphasis mine):

In addition to the national quota, the immense size of the U.S.’s immigration detention system isbolstered by a series of local-level quotas, written into detention facility contracts as “guaranteed minimums.” Guaranteed minimums, which appear mostly in ICE contracts with private contractors (though some exist with local governments), guarantee that ICE will pay for a minimum number of people to be detained at any given time. Because the government seeks to avoid paying for detention space that isn’t being used, guaranteed minimums are essentially local “lockup” quotas that influence ICE’s decision-making about immigration enforcement, whether or not people will be released, where people will be detained, and ultimately, who will profit or benefit from their detention.

Yes, you read that right.  "Private contractors."  Privately owned for-profit prisons.  Mostly the two biggest, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) and The Geo Group.

Obviously there is a lot wrong with this.  There is far more detail in the report than I will even try to explicate here.  Yet, as Sarah Lazare says in her article in AlterNEt, "one thing is clear: profits are soaring for GEO Group and CCA, the two largest private prison companies in the United States. Both boasted to their shareholders recently that revenues are spiking, thanks in part to the windfall from locking up families."

Karnes County Residential Center, in Karnes, TX, is owned by the GEO Group, and is cited as among the worst.  "Karnes, in particular, has been the site of repeated hunger strikes over inhumane conditions, including nearly free labor, lack of legal representation and contaminated drinking water. In 2014, some women detained at the prison alleged that guards sexually assaulted them."  You can Google "Karnes County Residential Center" and you will get quite an eyeful, just on the search results page.

Dear Erinyes, I hardly even know where to start.  Congress is reponsible for the quota system, and, though the current Congress is not the same Congress that did it, and hopefully the next one will be even more different, it is up to Congress to change it – no one else can.  It was a particularly grudging measure, right, Megaera?  And then there's the GEO group, profiting from the suffering of others, taking grudging all the way the vengeful destruction, Tisiphone, I would say (not to let any other actors off the hook, however.)  And Alecto, this just has to cease.  Onward.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross-posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/3996231