Private prison corporation devised Texas bill that would allow it to be a child care provider
The Texas legislature is considering legislation that would be good for both the private prison industry and the Trump administration.
After helping organize a hunger strike in 2015 at Texas’s Karnes County Residential Center, Kenia Galeano reflected on the dilemma she faced: “They told us that if we didn’t eat, we weren’t going to be capable of taking care of our children, and they would take them away from us.”
Galeano had just escaped gang violence in Honduras along with her nearly 2-year-old son Alejandro. Crossing the U.S.-Mexico border offered hope for safety and asylum. Yet she found herself locked up in a detention center operated by GEO Group. And here was the country’s second largest private prison corporation trying to tell her how to care for her child.
Now, two years after Galeano and her son were released from Karnes, GEO Group is trying to convince legislators they know how to care for children.
The Texas legislature is considering a bill that would allow Karnes and the nearby South Texas Family Residential Center operated by CoreCivic (formerly CCA) to be licensed as child care facilities. If the bill passes, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could detain women and children for longer periods of time.
No one in their right mind sees concrete and chain-link and thinks daycare. Both facilities have faced multiple allegations of sexual abuse and severe overcrowding. Galeano and her son were put in isolation in a darkened room for speaking up.
Clearly, the bill is about protecting profits, not children. In fact, the state representative who introduced it admitted the bill came directly from GEO Group:
“I’ve known the lady who’s their lobbyist for a long time …That’s where the legislation came from. We don’t make things up. People bring things to us and ask us to help.”
There are many eyes on Texas. The bill’s passage would be a victory for the Trump administration, which has been ramping up deportation but is running out of space to detain people. It would also please Wall Street, which finances the private prison industry. Banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America profit more when more people are locked up in private prisons and detention centers.
Allowing a private prison corporation to pretend it’s a child care provider would not only be absurd. But it would also further reveal that deporting undocumented immigrants is less driven by a genuine desire for public safety than it is by racism and private profit.
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Jeremy Mohler performs strategic communications for In the Public Interest, a nonprofit that advocates for the democratic control of public goods and services.
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