When it comes to for-profit, private corporate incarceration of immigrants, making lots of money is like drinking salt water: The more they drink, the thirstier they get. Roman proverbs say that the more money a rich man has, the more driven and addicted he becomes to accumulating even more money. Wealth addiction is at the root of giant private prison corporations’ domination of the US government as communities take a back seat to the need for private profit. Many government leaders from both political parties share the same “profits over people” ideology.

The industry is preparing for explosive growth. On recent earnings calls, CoreCivic executives announced plans to triple the number of beds in their facilities within a few months. That would mean an additional $1.5 billion in revenue for the corporation, more than doubling its annual earnings. The US private incarceration system is a deeply entrenched network of public-private partnerships that make billions from incarceration and detention every year.

Just like large. private health insurance corporations, the US private-profit incarceration system has the inherent tendency to invent new needs, disregard all boundaries, and turn everything into big profit. Limitless greed for money becomes a disease where a person may become oversaturated with food… but no one or private prison corporation ever has enough wealth. Wealth addiction is a greedy compulsion to obtain more and more wealth, and specifically obtain what belongs to others. The effect is to injure others because it is adversarial and harmful to society as a whole.

The private prison industry pushes for harsh immigration policies intended to drive up immigration detention. And private immigration detention centers suffer from many of the same problems as private prisons and jails, but the people held in them have even fewer rights and thus, at times, can suffer even more abuse.

Emerging from the Reagan administration’s advocacy of privatization of public services, immigration detention is now a booming business for private prison corporations. Today’s profiteering involves the complete outsourcing of the criminal legal system to the highest bidder. Corruption of money in politics allows greedy corporations to decimate families in disproportionately Black, brown, and Indigenous communities.

With burgeoning anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislative crackdowns at all levels, private prison corporations are increasing their hold on US detention policy. Today about 90% of detained immigrants are held in privately operated facilities, the highest percentage in US history. In a for-profit prison, jail, or immigrant detention facility, people are imprisoned by a private third party that contracts with a government agency. Contractual agreements between governments and private entities commit prisoners to privatized facilities and are paid a per diem or monthly rate, either for each immigrant or prisoner in the facility, or for each place available, whether occupied or not. Such contracts may be for the operation only of a facility, or for design, construction, and operation.

The Trump administration leaves no doubt that it will detain as many undocumented immigrants as it can and send them to for-profit centers. And to help make sure that happens, private prison companies spend millions on campaigns and congressional lobbying efforts, just like businesses that sell cars, real estate, hamburgers, or toothpaste.

Everyone interested should join all state and local efforts to end privatization. profiteering, and barbarous inappropriate imprisonment of immigrants.

Next to private health insurance corporations, there is no greater disconnect between the public good and private interests than the rise of corporate-owned and-operated for-profit jails. The interest of private jails lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates, but instead having as many immigrants and prisoners as possible housed as cheaply and profitably as possible. In the push for austerity and privatization, private profit US prison corporations have become premier examples of private capitalist enterprises seeking profits from the misery of man while trying to ensure that nothing is done to decrease that misery.

Profiteering private prison corporations are cashing in on the misery and desperation of US citizens as many county jail and state prison systems privatize throughout the nation. Private companies house over 10% of the nation’s total prison population, with privatization and profiteering madness now extending to well over 6 million people under correctional supervision, more than ever were in Stalin’s gulags.

Very alarming, the private prison industry now incarcerates 90% of all immigrant children, adolescents, and adults. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Alonzo Pena, acknowledged that the private companies have all too often fallen short, noting that “it wasn’t their priority to ensure that the highest standards were being met.” ICE deserves some blame and responsibility: “We set up this partnership with the private industry in a way that was supposed to make things much more effective, much more........

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