Trump wants huge $ to build private prisons

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"Prisons are to become the USA's top industry, apparently. $45 BILLION is being invested by the Trump regime into an explosion of new prisons around the country, according to news reports.
El Salvador provides a model that Trump appears eager to implement here. Why pay them to take in profitable slave-labor inmates, when he has seized the power to redefine our own system of justice, due process, and basic human rights right here in America?
Corporate-run for-profit prisons in America have already shown themselves to be a very lucrative industry. As migrant workers have disappeared, these prisons have been providing cheap labor for the farming industry. The inmates are paid pennies an hour, and the rest goes to the prison corporation.
Inmates are coerced into working, and meeting quotas, by threats of losing privileges such as family visits. The system works very well.
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The Associated Press reports that the House of Representatives has narrowly approved a broad spending bill that includes $175 billion for immigration enforcement, about 22 times ICE’s annual budget.
ICE has invited companies to bid on contracts to operate detention centers at sites around the country for $45 billion dollars of that budget, as the agency begins to scale up for incarceration of 100,000 people. The agency’s 100-plus detention centers nationwide currently hold about 46,000 people, and are severely overcrowded.
One of the contracts is for a detention center in Texas to house families with young children. It will hold 2,400 people.
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AP reports that Louisiana has become second only to Texas in the amount of prison space it offers for detained immigrants. ICE was drawn to the state in part by relatively low labor costs and a favorable political environment.
In rural areas, where a corrections facility is often a main driver of the local economy, officials have been eager to sign contracts for immigration detention. State legislators support the idea of for-profit prison industrial complexes that don't have to be run or financed by the county or state.
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“ICE gets to choose, basically, the courts where their cases are heard by locating detention centers in particular places," says one legal advocate.
Conservative federal courts make it tougher for people in Louisiana immigration jails to challenge detention conditions or to appeal immigration court rulings.
Louisiana’s nine immigration detention centers are in the rural north or western parts of the state. That means a drive of several hours from its largest cities, where immigration advocates and lawyers are clustered. There are few hotels for family visitors.
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The isolation and security protocols have led to little outside oversight, and there are ongoing reports of deplorable conditions, including abuse and shortages of food, sanitary measures, and medical attention.
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With excerpts from the Associated Press article
"Trump administration seeks explosive expansion of nation’s immigration detention system" by Sara Cline and Kate Brumpback
Updated 6:10 AM EDT, April 18, 2025