Trump's Child Detention Camps Cost $775 Per Person Every Day

[babylonsister]

https://www.gq.com/story/trump-detention-camps-cost?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=gq&utm_social-type=earned&fbclid=IwAR1p84C69eGxg9YFdvsCx5G9D9m-fIifFeITKsIPsuLah8TLKJF6yIWfIqY


Trump’s Child Detention Camps Cost $775 Per Person Every Day
The daily cost for a child in a detention camp is more than a stay in a deluxe room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
By Luke Darby
June 25, 2019


The Trump administration has been holding migrant children—whether they came to the U.S. alone or were forcibly separated from their guardians—in a network of makeshift tent camps since last summer. An unnamed official at the Department of Health and Human Services told NBC News that housing costs $775 per child per day.

That's more than a $675 deluxe guest room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (The average U.S. hotel room costs $129.)

Maintenance reportedly eats up most of the $775 daily cost per child for the tent camps, since it's difficult to keep temporary structures suitable for humans in a desert. In permanent facilities run by Health and Human Services, the cost is $256 per person per night, and NBC News estimates that even keeping children with their parents and guardians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities would only cost $298 per night.

Even at the permanent facilities, there are questionable circumstances beyond costs, like a lack of soap and blankets. Clinical-law professor Warren Binford interviewed child detainees at a facility in Clint, Texas, telling Isaac Chotiner at The New Yorker, "There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once...one of the reasons why we came back for a fourth day is that some of the children, on Wednesday, told us that there was a lice infestation, as well as an influenza outbreak, at that facility, and so a number of the children are being taken into isolation rooms, quarantine areas where there’s nobody with them except for other sick children."

Like the prison industry for the U.S. criminal justice system, private companies can make a lot of money in the immigrant-detention business. Private-prison firm Geo Group has reportedly already made $500 million from migrant detention centers since Trump's "zero tolerance policy" began, as reported by the Miami New Times. Southwest Key Programs, a nonprofit that set up a boys' shelter in the husk of an old Walmart, reportedly netted $955 million in federal contracts between 2015 and 2018, according to The New York Times. A network of nonprofit groups, BCFS, reportedly received $179 million in the same time period. BCFS is the same contractor that held migrant kids in parked vans for 39 hours earlier this year, as ICE slowly did the paperwork to reunite the children with their families.

As the Texas Tribune reports, since the filthy conditions at child detention centers went public, people in Texas have been collecting donations of diapers, soap, and toothbrushes. So far, Customs and Border Protection has refused to accept the donations.

[Meadowoak]

1. You might think $775 could include a bar of soap and a toothbrush.

[Achilleaze]

2. republican corporations ripping off US taxpayers in order to...

...profitably FAIL to solve a problem the republicans have made WAY WORSE since they stole the 2016 election with the evil empire* russians.

It's a regular KGOP republican krap fest.

* according to former republican hero ronald reagan, russia is the evil empire. Latter Day republicans piss on this idea and embrace the empire reagan was so deeply concerned about.

[rampartc]

8. the difference between reagan the "gipper" and trump the "gypper"

[Corgigal]

3. No one is getting anything unless

Trump got paid first. That's why he's there and the only thing he cares about.

[babylonsister]

9. He did get paid...

and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

snip//

The Federal Bureau of Prisons agreement to reopen North Lake is just one of the contracts the company has inked with the federal government since the Trump administration took power. That’s not a bad return on investment for the $395,000 in combined PAC and direct contributions that GEO Group made to various Trump-supporting PACs in 2016, including $225,000 that has attracted a lawsuit by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.

But while GEO Group is celebrating its success, others aren’t as pleased. Immigration advocates worry that people incarcerated in North Lake will be more than an hour from potential legal counsel and hundreds or even more than 1,000 miles away from their families. Criminal justice reform advocates are concerned because for-profit prisons operate even less transparently than government-run facilities.

The Campaign Legal Center is suing to try to force the Federal Election Commission to enforce the law which bars federal contractors from making campaign contributions. Local people are grateful for GEO’s $8.8 million pledge to upgrade the community’s sewers, but they also hope that this time, the company will actually hire some locals to fill some of the reopened facility’s better-paying jobs.

more...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/14/1857407/-After-investing-in-Trump-s-campaign-GEO-Group-is-reopening-Michigan-s-only-for-profit-prison

[SallyHemmings]

4. Operation Dumbass

Is the next step air dropping supplies in the area? It helped In Europe during WWII.

[RandiFan1290]

5. Precious 'capitalism'

[C_U_L8R]

6. What a scam

Trump crony companies are ripping us off. Holding kids hostage in inhumane concentration camps and charging Ritz Carlton rates to abuse them. It's sick. The gallows are too good for monsters like this.

[watoos]

7. Check out the deficit,

The complicit far right M$M which includes cable news, hasn't said a peep about the exploding deficit.

The market is booming because Trump artificially stimulated it with 1.5 trillion dollars and repatriated offshore money for pennies on the dollar. Trump's deregulations that are destroying our environment are also saving corporations money.
The enormous spending bill that was passed.
Our deficit is well over 1 trillion dollars a year and growing.

$775.00 per kid per day, just put it on the tab.

Now that Dems control the House will we become fiscally responsible? Cutting defense spending is the kiss of death, especially leading up to a presidential election.

[Odoreida]

10. The Trump International Hotel does not need armed guards to keep people in.

Three shifts of same at a detention facility.

Whatever else is going on, that is a difference in "legitimate expense".

[TheBlackAdder]

11. Wouldn't a Hampton Inn be cheaper? And that comes with French Milled Soap, toothbrushes and towels.

[ehrnst]

12. Exactly why legislation is needed to give Congress oversight, and the ability to cancel

a contract if the org isn't doing the job to the specific standards in the legislation.

[Greybnk48]

13. Money laundering and theft. They aren't spending that amount

per child per day. Some are lying on concrete with no caretaker and some babies have no diapers. Trump's using the concentration camps to steal tax money.

[AwakeAtLast]

14. Send one child to all of us

For $775 a day we can easily take care of one child. In luxury.