Careless Detention – System of Neglect and PBS on Immigrant Detention Centers as the New Profit Centers

The Washington Post has picked up on where the NYT left off and is doing a series on the abuse and neglect in the immigration detention system. The series is here.

Also PBS has picked this up as well with “Immigrant Detainees- A New Profit Center?”
NOW looks at how the private corrections industry is profiting when immigrants are held in detention centers awaiting deportation. The term “gold rush” is used to describe the building of more immigrant detention facilities.

The point of a capitalist system is to make profit by whatever means as long as it doesn’t jeopardize the system. Immigrant detention in bad medical facilities, while inhumane and actually illegal, doesn’t get the American public particularly riled up unless it is to question why immigrant detainees–people who are here without proper authorization–should get access to health care in the first place.

We are living in a time that people are so concerned about their own welfare and making ends meet that compassion, kindness and caring for another human being seems to come second, or not at all. It almost sounds like we have reverted back to the state of nature, with a “war of all against all” (sorry Hobbes). We need to find someone to blame so lets blame the immigrant detainees living in abusive conditions for taking away our health care. And undocumented students are filling up spots in schools and taking up college loans. And migrant workers are taking away our jobs picking tomatoes, working as janitors, chefs, construction workers and other service-related jobs. Please…Quit blaming your problems (and at times, incompetence) on others who are in the same boat or probably worse off than you.

It should be obvious by now that capitalism is neither sustainable nor does it work in the interests of everyone.