"Do You Have Any Idea How Much I Earn on Immigrants?...They Are More Profitable Than Drugs."

[McCamy Taylor]

The speaker is Salvatore Buzzi, caught on tape bragging about how easy it was to make money by pretending to house and feed Italy's immigrants, many of whom had actually fallen into the hands of sex traffickers or been recruited as low wage laborers or forced to work for criminal organizations.

When asylum requests are rejected, applicants have one chance to appeal. If they fail, they are given a slip of paper that says they have five days to leave the country, but no means to do so. Torn-up shreds of those papers are a common sight in the ditches beside the road near the centre. Those turned down are easy bait for criminal gangs working inside the camps, who get paid for providing mafia groups with illegal cheap labour, running drugs and arms or working in the many industries those groups have infiltrated.

In 2014, an investigation known as “Mafia Capitale” found that a criminal group had been running Rome’s municipal government for years. The group, which prosecutors defined as a mafia-style association, had siphoned off millions of euros intended to fund public services. The group had also infiltrated asylum centres across the country, buying and selling names and details of migrants who had long disappeared, in order to keep the per-person state funding coming.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/01/migrants-more-profitable-than-drugs-how-mafia-infiltrated-italy-asylum-system

The United States is not so different from Italy. Right now, a bunch of organized criminals disguised as businessmen and politicians are making out like bandits thanks to immigrants.

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/565318778/big-money-as-private-immigrant-jails-boom

The two largest private corrections corporations, GEO Group and CoreCivic, each gave $250,000 to Trump's inaugural festivities.

The Obama administration took the extraordinary step of phasing out contracts with private prisons that house immigrants convicted of crimes committed in the U.S. The Justice Department found these prisons fall short on safety and security, and are no cheaper than those run by the federal government.

Since Trump took office, the Bureau of Prisons has restored those contracts.

And ICE is proposing five new private detention centers — in Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Salt Lake City and south Texas.

What the fuck, you will probably ask after you read the article above. Immigrants come here to work. To contribute to the economy. And instead, we, the taxpayers of the United States, are being asked to pay billions to Trump donors to incarcerate them in for profit prisons where they will labor for $1 a day. That is work that some American citizen will not be doing. And the people who own these prisons--let's call them what they are, the organized criminals who own these prisons---will be paid generously to enslave human beings. It's a crime against humanity as well as grand theft larceny. It is Italy all over again. Because immigrants are more profitable than drugs.

Do not be fooled by pundits who tell you that Trump's immigration policies are intended to energize the base. Trump does not have "policies." He has investment strategies. Trump has only ever cared about one thing--money. And immigrants in the United States, as in Italy, provide an easy way for criminals disguised as businessmen to make a killing.

The people who victimize immigrants only pretend to support the views of xenophobes like those who belong to Stormfront. Anti-immigrant violence makes it easier for the criminals to take advantage of immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiment means that no one gives a damn when an immigrant is abused, murdered. In fact, these criminals--like the criminals associated with Donald Trump--- love immigrants. Their labor is cheap. They can be beaten, robbed, raped and if they try to complain, they can be threatened with deportation. They can be fed pig slops that a US citizen prison inmate would call cruel and unusual punishment--and the organized criminal can bill the government for fillet mignon. Their kids can be snatched---a for profit adoption costs up to $40,000 in this country.

This is not an ideological battle. This is human trafficking. Slavery. Exploitation. Of men, women and yes, children. And it is going on in our backyards.

[mr_lebowski]

1. Putting the jailed immigrants to work for a $1/day is what I've been saying is the end-game

for well over a year here on DU.

And guess who be allowed to avail themselves of this uber-cheap labor? Big Ag companies that write big checks to the GOP. Family farmers (what's left of them) will be forced out of business and have to sell their lands to the Big Ag companies because of this human rights atrocity.

Trump's GOP is literally a criminal fascist enterprise, from top to bottom.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Dollar a day migrant farm workers. Chavez is rolling over in his grave.

It's like slavery except now the federal government will pay slave owners to own slaves.

[smirkymonkey]

3. This is obscene!

This needs to go viral. People need to know what is going on! How do we stop this? I feel so powerless.

I can't believe how evil some people can be. It has shaken my faith in humanity.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. K&FuckingR!

[eppur_se_muova]

5. While Bethany is getting $700/day to kidnap kids and "lose" them ... nt

[Wounded Bear]

6. Follow the money...

always follow the money. When shit like this crops up, as it always seems to, always find out who profits from it.

Somebody, somewhere, is making a profit. You can be sure of it.